Lexicon of Laughs

 Joe was this week’s host and I arrived at his place at 7.30 with Katy following shortly afterwards and Joe and Sam were already there, idly kicking around a game of League of the Lexicon. Adam T arrived soon after too. The game is like Trivial Pursuit but without the board and all the questions are about words. Maybe there are rules involved, but we just rolled a dice and tried to answer a question like “what’s the literal meaning of umbrella.”

Then Martin and Adam H came in, with Steve somewhere outside looking for a parking space. He’d get here after another ten minutes.

We kicked off the evening with Phantom Ink, the supernatural game of communing with the dead (in this case, Katy and Sam) and trying to deduce a word using obscure questions and unfinished answers. We split into teams. Katy was with Martin, Adam T and Steve while Sam was with Adam H, Joe and me.

We  asked questions like “What would happen if you ate it” and Sam wrote down “D” and said the letter outloud, as per the rules, but I think he said “D” with such finality that we were able to guess he was going to write “die” (which is was). The word in question was Mountain (which would certainly kill you if you ate it) which Adam H, Joe and I got on our second guess. The other team were leaning towards “Tent” - something to do with there being a tent in the film Brokeback Mountain.

Then we split into two groups of eight.

Adam T, Martin, Katy and Sam played Maskmen. As they went into the penultimate round, there was a possibility of everyone ending on 2 points, but instead the tie was between three people and Katy was left grasping at straws by asking if tied scores maybe cancelled each other out.

Adam T 3 (wins with most +2 tokens)

Martin 3

Sam 3

Katy -1

Then they played Accuse! which Adam T won and then Misfits with it’s by now gravity defying constructions astonishing everyone. And Adam T won that game as well.

During these three games, Adam H, Joe, Steve and myself had been playing Pass Pass, a trick-taking game that encourages loose informal alliances because players who came first and second in a hand get to pick up cards. Cards are points (and so are diamonds on those cards) but most importantly, if a player picks up at least one of each colour then that is a Pass Pass, and three Pass Passes means you instantly win.

Steve was distracted by phone calls from his son and also kept playing his cards on top of previously played cards, as if he were playing snap, and we had to keep separating them.

Joe was closest to getting his third pass pass but just fell short.

Andrew 34

Steve 32

Joe 28

Adam H 19

At the end of Pass Pass we watched the end of Misfits ...

... and then we all reorganised into new groups. Sam, Adam T, Joe and Steve played Robot Quest Arena while Adam H, Martin and I chose Havalandia. But first we squeezed in a game of Trio with Katy before she went off home for an early night. 

We played as teams and Adam H and I won. I forgot to take a photo until it was over…

Once Katy had gone, we three played Havalandia. I had the rare pleasure of blocking Martin so he couldn’t make his super high scoring launch, but honestly, it turned out that Martin was the least of my troubles. Mid-game, Martin said we should never let him have a corner to himself, and so it turned out to be.

Adam H 105

Andrew 83
Martin 81

RQA sounded like fun. Joe bought some advanced AI but then later he simply attacked Sam with a hammer. Adam T must have had a lot of power-ups because he apologised that his turns took twice as long as everyone else.

Sam 24

Adam T 20

Joe 19

Steve 18

Then Adams T and H and Steve left. Because I had the day off work tomorrow, I was able to stay until the end.

We tried Stinker. Always fun and offensive, but somehow not as much fun with fewer players.

Sam 3

Martin 2

Joe 1

Andrew 1

Finally we played So Clover twice. We scored 22/24, just falling short of perfection due to Joe’s clever clue being too clever. He wrote Gazpacho, which we struggled with. It was not helped with “diet” and “tomato” both being on cards but we should have been looking for “revenge”. Because, as Joe later explained, they are both best served cold.

In the second game we got a perfect score. Again, Joe’s was last to be served and he had another classic clue: he wrote “asswipe” for tail/soap. Poetic.

See you all next week.

Our autoplay has been updated

Tuesday games this week kicked off at 8 with six gamers in attendance, Katy, Martin, Sam, Ian, Andy and myself. Our first game was For Sale, and what an odd game it was. Sam picked up the 1 since"you know where you are with a one," and then he picked up an 8, which had an igloo on it. After all, he quipped, "you know where you are with an igloo… the north pole." He also got the 2, making him the most locationally certain player that For Sale has ever seen.

In the buying round, Martin made happy noises about how well everything was going. His confidence was entirely justified, and there was a three-way tie for third.

Martin 51
Ian 47
Sam 44 + cash
Katy 44 + less cash
Andy 44 + much less cash
Andrew 39

Then we split into two groups. Katy, Martin and Sam went off to play something whose name escapes me, but looked like this.

After that, I’m told they played Masked Men and it ended:

Katy 5
Martin 5
Sam -2

Meanwhile, Ian, Andy and I played Buttons. Ian got a rules explanation from Andy, even though it had been me that suggested it. Thanks Andy. I then went bust in round one, you know, just to show Ian what it looked like. 

Ian looked like he was going for two rows of six when I got lucky with a dice roll and was able to Opt Out in a winning position. The other two had to push their luck or admit defeat. Ian failed in his attempt but Andy was more fortunate. As we saw the result, I was remind of this game’s comedic lop-sided scoring system,

Andrew 108
Andy 108
Ian 8

After this Ian said he was in the mood for something light, and Andy suggested Sapiens. It may be light to him, but I found there were enough rules for them to blur together in a sticky mash.  There were lots of icons and something about food. The situation wasn’t helped by me having to quickly dash downstairs mid-game and open a tin of sardines for my girlfriend. 

Andy 31
Ian 24
Andrew 20

After this, Katy and Martin had joined our Google Hangout after Sam had left for the night and we ended with No Thanks, this time exploring the possibilities of the automatic pass system. This little option allows you to keep adding coins until a certain value is reached, and when it does this, it does it extremely quickly. This makes the player look very impatient and petulant. Martin also liked the message “your autoplay has been updated” that appears onscreen when you use it. As for the game, I was winning until the last card, which was 32 and Martin milked it for as much as he dared.

Martin 11
Andrew 24
Katy 25
Andy 39
Ian 49

And so that was it. Thanks everyone. See you next Tuesday.

Babble on

This week's GNN was a relatively sparse affair, with just three of us joining Martin at his kitchen table - Katy, Adam T, and myself (Sam). Adam was last to arrive, and we realised if we started playing Gold Fever he would undoubtedly show up. This proved to be the case, but we simply dealt him in a bag, and he instantly drew two grey gravel. On his next go he drew two white gravel. "It's one of those luck-pushing games" he realised, while Martin complained that I gave him my gravel when he didn't have any gold. Katy gave him gravel too; but he just didn't know, as he was answering the door...

Sam - 4 gold!
Everyone else - Can't remember. Think Katy had one.

Forgot to take photos

Then we started on the first 'proper' game of the night with Babylonia. Katy wasn't keen, but Martin said she'd enjoy it now she knew what was going on, and this was at least partly true. It reminded me most of Samurai, with certain things being scored when surrounded, although the placement was also a bit Blue Lagoony, and the various nobles also put me in mind of Tigris and Euphrates.

it's so simple

That's not a bad ancestry, and although the game is very abstract, the turns were surprisingly quick. Adam emerged triumphant from whatever it was, thematically speaking, we were actually doing (I was never entirely clear) causing much gnashing of teeth from Martin. Katy lost, but wanted it noted that she led for most of the game. Another solid entry in the good doctor's ever-lengthening list of games that make you wail with despair.

Adam 118
Martin 113
Sam 111
Katy 109

me, and the the farmers

Then it was Die Crew again, so we all suited up and launched ourselves into trick-taking, google-translated space, where the trickiness of the missions is foreshadowed in the confusing commentary. Despite my failings - I was usually culpable - we completed Missions 19-22 with only a few dead cosmonauts along the way. We were so submerged in the narrative that I entirely forgot to take photos again!

Imagine the Crew here

Next to the table was either Montage, or Maskmen. Katy said she didn't want to play a word game, so Maskmen it was. Despite several plays, we - or Katy and I anyway - still needed to check with Martin what cards could be played when. I think it was new to Adam, and as last person to play he was surprised to find he couldn't legally play cards after we three had. He checked if it worked with four, and Martin - who'd just dumped three cards - assured him it worked perfectly well. Adam recovered from this indignity happening again moments later to recover, but not enough: Martin won both the opening rounds and, even though I could have drawn level in round three, we awarded him the win in favour of moving on...

Martin 4
Sam 2
Katy and Adam: 0

Forgot to take photos again. Come back, Andrew!

Adam was keen to try Hurlyburly and everyone else was more than amenable. After Martin explained the rules to Adam...

I made up for lost time by embarking on a spree of slow-motion movies that failed to capture any of the pivotal moments...

...the most satisfying being when my one and only block knocked down Martin's tower as he stood on the verge of victory. Adam won the first game, and although I thought there was a second this morning both my notes and Martin insist there wasn't. This is slightly alarming considering I was drinking alcohol-free beer.

confused again

Adam then started making going home noises, but we cajoled one final game out of him, which was Karambolage. I sped into an early 4-point lead but then got the Considerable Yips, and remained stuck there for the duration. Martin scored big but when bust when he sent pucks flying off the table. Adam managed to miss a shot from about 4 centimetres away; as he walked into the kitchen in disgust Katy rolled the same dice and missed an even easier shot...

Before Martin surged up to a resplendent finish to claim the win:

Martin 10
Sam 4
Katy 3
Adam 0

Adam's walk of disgust then turned into a slightly longer drive home, and it was Katy's turn to be cajoled: this time into playing The Mind Extreme. She reasoned that she was terrible at The Mind and would be even worse at this, which actually proved to be not the case right up until it was on level 5 - when she sat pat on the 46 and pooh-poohed the idea of re-syncing until she realised what re-syncing was.

 I think we crashed out on level 6, but it was a decent effort considering these were all played face-down...

dastardly fifteen

And with the time nearing 11, it was pumpkin o'clock for us - we headed home with another little chapter of GNN history allotted it's parcel of time, drama, comedy, and too many smutty innuendoes to begin listing here involving almost every aspect of Hurlyburly you could mention. 

Bring Your Own Cestus

Tuesday arrived with yet more drama playing out in Parliament - I mention this because I hope one day we'll look back and laugh, but probably not - and so we grasped preoccupations of our own with which to spend the evening. Rovers having a match on meant Joe and Adam were struggling to find places to park, however, so there was a conversation between myself (Sam), Katy, Ian and Sally that lasted at least five minutes.

"Will you be joining us tonight?" Katy asked, but Sally declined. She had children to wrangle into bed, an event they always resist with increasingly demented strategies.

By the time all the willing gamers were finally sat at the table, it was nearing 8 o'clock, and we kicked off with a six-player Bring Your Own Book. Adam had brought his own (Thomas Pynchon) so from our bookshelves we mixed in Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carson McCullers, Zadie Smith, Nick Hornby, and the British Gardeners Guide to Insects.

Joe won this with "How much have you drunk?"

Adam grabbed an early lead with his answer to what one might see on a bumper sticker: I'm driving along the freeway looking for Volkswagens to destroy. Ian requested a name for a Battleship and most of us found suitably aggressive-sounding monikers, but Katy took the point with Puddles. 

Step five in Katy taking over the world was Vibrate, vibrate, and vibrate again (although I still liked my suggestion of several bird calls). My craft beer was called Fuck you, leave me alone and at the end of a good half-hour of Stinker-like nonsense, Adam took the win. 

With the hour closer to 9 than 8, the day's talk of Pax Pamir dissipated with Martin, Adam and Katy trying out Martin's latest Knizian Fix: Clash of the Gladiators. I - along with Joe and Ian - was fixated on our dubiously-motived scramble around Africana, so didn't pick up much about the game aside from the fact there was a lot of swearing going on. When I asked if the game was any good, Martin replied "Yes! Adam just twatted a lion"

Meantime Ian's eerie predictions of his own demise looked like coming true in Africana as we both found ourselves in the northern hemisphere when all the expeditions started in the south - where Joe was. He led the early running, and my optimism aligned aligned to Ian's when I paid no less than eight coins to keep turning the pages of the book (what is the book?) in order to find myself another assistant. 

I love the simplicity of Africana though, even if fate can occasionally crap on you from a height: twice I had a large hand of cards but was unable to use them to any effect. Ian and I thought Joe had the game stitched up, but thanks to my expedition cards I managed an unlikely win. And Ian was closer than we all expected...

Sam 36
Joe 32
Ian 28

At the other end of the table, after some talk about 'fucking the bear' ("Can you fuck it nicely?" Katy asked) Clash of the Gladiators had also finished:

Adam 20
Katy 18
Martin 17

Gladiators: Ready!

The verdict was broadly positive, so hopefully we'll see it again. They'd also squeezed in a game of Hats...

Martin 42
Adam 36
Katy 34

And after Adam retired for the evening, Katy and Martin played a round of Maskmen:

Martin 2
Katy 1

After Africana, Ian elected to depart as well, leaving us as a four. We decided on Polterfass as a nice 10pm game, and began rolling barrels like our livelihoods depended on it. Thank God they actually don't, though, because as always in Polterfass I repeatedly shot myself in the foot, even allowing Katy - 30 points behind me at one stage - to overhaul me. The battle for first was always between Martin and Joe, and Martin's cause was harpooned when we collectively bid for all of his beer. The smirk was wiped from my face when the same thing happened to me moments later - but the round of the night was the final one, where Katy scored a whopping 21 beers and Joe staggered drunkenly over the victory line. Katy caught Martin for joint second.

Joe 84
Martin / Katy 47
Sam 37

I asked if there was a tie-breaker and everyone scathingly cried "What, for second place?" as though I was pedantically foot-noting. I don't know, it's not the same without Andrew here... I forgot to take photos of Polterfass, but here is the box from a funny angle.

The last game of the night was a newbie - Startups, from Oink games - purveyors of interesting decisions and graphically-pleasing bits in small boxes. I wondered if it was a bit late to be learning any rules but Martin batted my feebleness aside, even though he admitted Oink rulebooks were usually "a bit weird".

Point rewards left; Monopoly tokens right

The game is a bit weird too.  A deck of cards represents several startup companies, and during play you're building a tableau of these cards in front of you. At the end of the round what you're aiming for is the most of the company cards you've collected - anyone who has less of that type of card has to pay you, and most money wins the round. It's classic Oink scoring - 2points for first, 1point for second, -1point for last place.

On your turn you pick up a card, and play a card - but inevitably there are catches. The card you pick up can be a free face-up card from the collective dumping ground (the market), or the top card from the deck if you want to pay a coin to any face-up cards in the market. You can then play a card into either the market, or your tableau. Having the most of a type of card gets you the monopoly token - now you don't have to pay to any matching cards in the market - but you're not allowed to pick them up either!

What this makes for is a jostle for positioning on various companies and the desire to avoid having certain cards means you may - as I did, twice - end up spending far too much money avoiding them. A final twist: when the deck runs out the three cards in your hand get added to your tableau, and (unless there are ties) coins are paid to all the monopoly holders before points are scored.

I finished the first two round in third, but collapsed to ignominy in the final round. The others fared a little better - Martin went from a shocking opening round to grabbing the win:

Martin 3
Katy 2
Joe 2
Sam -1

This time there was a decider - Katy won the tie-breaker to claim second. We all liked Startups - very, very Oinky and I think a bit less procedural feeling than Flotsam Fight - closer to Maskmen in how hard it is to get a handle on - in a good way.

But with the hour now 11 o'clock, it was time to head home to bed. Until next time... thank you all, it was special.

Punch, Kick, It's All In The Mind

This week's games night saw a steadily shifting number of players around Sam's kitchen table, all vying to be the best.

We (Martin, Katy, Joe, Stanley, Sam & Joe, Ian, Adam and I) began with a recent Knizia. What new ideas would he bring to the table this time? Well... ones that vaguely resemble his old ideas, truth be told. The game was Karate Tomate and is a trick taking game whose defining features are (a) a general lack of cards unless you drop out of a round early so you can pick some up and (b) player with least kitchen knives automatically loses.

It was pretty smart. Trying to judge when to not bet was interesting because if too many drop out at the same time, then those remaining can pick up trophies and knives for next to nothing.

The theme, though, barely made any sense. Something to do with tomatoes and needing knives to see off your opponents' vegetables? It kind of reminded me of Parappa the Rapper, the old PS1 game with an onion that sang martial arts advice to you (which explains the blog title), but otherwise it was pretty tenuous. I’m a little surprised they didn’t go for a Karate/Carrot-e pun, but maybe that had already been done.

Joe 13
Adam 12
Sam and Joe 9
Martin 8
Andrew 7
Ian 5
Katy and Stanley had joint fewest knives.

Then Joe junior went to bed and the rest of us split into two groups. Martin, Adam and Katy played Res Arcana, an engine building game with a kind of fantasy theme. (Why on earth was Martin playing it?) The rest of us (Stanley, Ian, Sam, Joe and me) played Down Force, the exciting game of betting and racing.

Stanley picked up two cars in the opening round. Would this be his undoing? The rest of us had one car each. Also, Stanley kept getting distracted by Res Arcana being played next to him. He even gave Katy some helpful advice.

On Down Force, Joe played a clever but frustrating game whereby he was twice able to put his car at the start of a chicane so the rest of us had to begrudgingly move it in order to get past. It was hardly in the spirit of F1, but was probably how the game is meant to be played: hitting those sweet spots to make everyone else move you along.

But Stanley's orange car sped off into the lead in the second half of the race, knocking Joe's blue car into second. My yellow came in third. Sam was slightly embarrassed by his betting choices pushing his score into negative numbers while Joe showed an admirable sense of confidence by betting only on himself. Meanwhile, Res Arcana hadn't been as much of a distraction for Stanley as we might have wanted.

Stanley 23
Joe 17
Andrew 7
Ian 5
Sam -1

Res Arcana was still ongoing so Joe introduced us to Nyet. This trick taking card game is a strange beast, with a slightly different set of rules each round and teams that are decided at the start of each round. Intriguing and a bit baffling as we got hung up on the definition of Super Trumps.

We only had time to play one round and it was much more straightforward once you started playing it. The teams were Ian and me against Sam and Joe and thanks to a flurry of loot cards in our tricks, Ian and I won.

Ian and me 48
Sam and Joe 36

Res Arcana finished after all that mucking about with Calm and Elan

Martin 10
Adam 7
Katy 3

Martin credited his victory with filling up the Catacombs of the Dead. Whatever that means.

At this point, Adam left too. A very early departure for someone who was generous enough to bring two different snacks and so early that he missed the BBQ Beef Hula Hoops. Now we were down to six so seats were swapped and groups reformed. Katy, Ian and Joe played Hit Z Road and Martin, Sam and I went back in time to the Roman Empire in a game of Senators.

We played with the support cards this time, little game breaking things that offer you an advantage but can be embezzled away by your opponents.

We played twice. In game one, Martin raced into an early lead and looked good for a strong game when a fourth war occurred and we were suddenly done. Not to be dissuaded, we cheekily shuffled that fourth war card back into the pack and kept playing. But Lady Luck will not be fooled and after barely a couple of turns, the fourth war card popped up again. This time we took the hint.

Martin 8
Sam 5
Andrew 4

We set up again for another try. This time we seeded one of the five war cards in the second half of the deck. Hopefully this would give us a decent amount of time.

Meanwhile, in post zombie apocalypse America, Ian was already down to his last two survivors.

In Senators Mark II, Sam had a support card that gave an extorter an additional five coins before extorting for the other players. So, obviously, Sam was a little Roman mafioso, taking full advantage of his power. Meanwhile Martin also extorted every round, trying to get the card off Sam. I didn't, since I needed resources (I even sung “dwindling resources” to the tune of “Waltzing Matilda”) so I could cash in but never got much luck.

And, yet again, the fourth war seemed to come round sooner than we were expecting. Martin was happy because he'd just cashed in and used a consul card to steal a senator from Sam, pushing him into first, when the game ended.

Martin 8
Sam 6
Andrew 5

With Katy, Joe and Ian still staggering through the landscape of the undead, we fired off a quick two round game of Maskmen. Finally a game I won, but I made no notes at all. I do remember Sam saying he knew he'd lost round one when he had a hand of mostly two colours and those were both played by Martin and I first, effectively making them the weakest suits.

Andrew 2
Martin 1
Sam 1

In Hit Z Road, Ian's valiant last stand against zombies ended as you might expect in a zombie film with another twenty minutes to run. Joe, on the other hand, had all of his survivors intact. Katy's last two survivors died and then she too ended up as nothing but a name in the final credits. This meant Joe, with his gang of zombie-proof friends, won instantly.

Joe, alive and kicking
Katy and Ian, kicked the bucket

It was late but enough time for a big friendly game for all of us. Perudo or Just One? Those were the choices. The voting went to two rounds before Just One was eliminated and old favourite Perudo was chosen.

Ian followed up his Hit Z Road storyline of dying young with a repeat performance in Perudo. After him, I was next to Palafiko (spelling? Still not sure) but didn’t go out. Instead I clung on while first Martin then Joe went out. Then finally I was vanquished so that the real battle could commence: Sam versus Katy, three dice each.

Katy lost two quickly but when it came to palafiko her bid of “one six” won: Sam had rolled himself three fives! Then Sam went down to one die but there’s not palafiko on 1 vs 1, so when Katy bid One Six, he knew he was doomed with his one five.

Katy wins!
Sam next,
Andrew next,
Joe next,
Martin next,
Ian last.

By now it was eleven and as we were packing up, Texas Jim came in from the next room. This old stalwart of pre-GNN poker nights was visiting and had come in to see what all the laughter and jollity was. Alas, the laughter was ending and I felt a pang of regret that we didn’t have enough in us for one last game.

But we really didn’t. Thanks to Sam for hosting and thanks to all for attending.

The Power of Ten

On Friday Martin and I faced off across the spotty blue plastic-coated tablecloth of destiny with a bunch of two-player games at our disposal. I'd long wanted to try Iron Curtain, Martin had a similar curiosity about Res Arcana - so naturally we began with a completely different game, Omiga.

This is a real-time game of pattern recognition and tile placement. Each player starts with one tile on the playing area, and must add more tiles that (background colour aside) match its neighbours: blue half-circle to blue half-circle, say, or positive arrow to negative arrow. The goal is to get around the back of your opponents' tiles - the first one to do so wins. It's fast, frenetic and just right length: our contest took about 53 seconds.

Martin - wins
Sam - doesn't

Next up was Iron Curtain. I've long been both interested in these two-player face-offs over control (13 Minutes, Cousin's War, Fort Sumter) but always felt the actual play - with the exception of the brilliant Twilight Struggle - was too abstract. I don't think Iron Curtain totally breaks that paradigm for me personally, but it's certainly a big improvement on the cube-pushing perception of the games mentioned above.

Here players add area cards to an expanding tableau, and can take an action or add influence cubes  depending on who the card 'belongs to' (despite being a superpower, you are often playing cards that belong to your opponent) Points are scored for card control and area control.

It was close, but no cigar for me.

Martin - superpower!
Sam - supermarket

Now it was Martin's turn to learn a game - Res Arcana. I've been playing this a lot with Stan, who likes the similarity to Magic - mechanically it's quite different, but players are facing off against each other in a race: in Res Arcana, first to ten victory points wins.

Each player only has one Mage (special ability) and eight Artefact cards to play over the entire game, and the goal is to combine them into an engine builder that rewards you with bundles of resources - and in turn, buy Monuments or Places of Power with them; both of which score points. The Places of Power are only five in total, which lends Res Arcana an air of tension. Another neat twist is that passing scores you a (temporary) point. I wheedled my way past Martin to snatch the win, thanks to my cards providing bounteous resources.

Sam - Res Arcana!
Martin - Low res

Martin kicked himself for some of his decision-making, but I wouldn't want to play him now he knows what he's doing - I only beat him by a single point.

Throne and the Grail was less close. This is a neat set-collection game with a twist. Players add cards from their hand to a tableau and only once per round may collect 5 of the cards for their own sets, which - one hopes - score for the most-of something, plus 5 points for runs across each of the numbered cards. There are also plus and minus point cards with which to season/poison the well... the twist however is the three grail cards: if a player manages to collect all of them, they win instantly.

I gambled when Martin had two of them already and swooped in - leaving him free to play the third grail card to the table, and then pick it up!

Martin - Throne and Grail!

That was our fourth game, and we were just getting started! I liked Throne and Grail so much I asked we play again, and managed to beat him by a meagre 3 points...

Sam - Long live the king etc

Martin wanted to try Maskmen with two as he had heard it was good. It was fun, but halfway through he predicted we'd win two rounds each, and that's exactly how it panned out.

Martin/Sam - best uncertain wrestling promoters

Then another new game for me - Khmer. It's a game of simple rules that provides tension, brinkmanship and a bit of bluff - players are dealt cards numbering between 1 and 6, and on their turn have four options: dump a card from the game (this is only allowed with a 6, though) play a card to the table, claim a card from the table for yourself (this stays visible but is considered part of your hand) or knock. You knock when you think the cards in your hand collectively score the same (or just under, but must be closer than your opponent!) as the cards on the table. Martin wiped the floor with me, and the game is so quick I demanded we play again.

He won again. I stopped demanding.

Instead, as Sally returned from her night out, we embarked on The Fox in the Forest, a two-player trick-taker where the odd-numbered cards in the three suits each have special powers. Utilising these is really how you win the game, and I think my lack of familiarity with them didn't help. But at this point I was on my fourth glass of wine so who knows. The scoring for FitF is clever too: win 0-3 tricks of the available thirteen for 6 points. Or win 7-10 tricks for the same reward. Middling trick wins award dribbling points though - and 11-13 trick wins get you no points at all, but instead labelled Greedy by the score sheet.

Martin - Fox!
Sam - Hen

The evening was coming to a close but as we still had our sobering tea to drink we bashed out a final game of Khmer. I painted a silver lining around my evening of mostly-defeats by grabbing an unlikely win!

Sam - Khmer!
Martin - come again?

A great night of two-player battles - ten in all. I liked Iron Curtain and the Fox in the Forest, liked Khmer a lot, and loved Throne and the Grail. Thanks Martin!

Markers Aurelius

This week's games night began with eight people sat around Sam's kitchen table: Sam, Stanley, Joe, other Joe, Martin, Quentin, Katy, and me. We needed a short game we could all play before one of the Joes had to go to bed. We chose Insider and dealt Quentin in despite him never having played before.

Regular gamer Joe was the master and he handled our questions dutifully until Martin blurted out "Is it a volcano?" which was the correct word.

We discussed whether or not Martin was the Insider, but we had very little to go on. In the end, only Joe voted against him and it went to another round of voting, with Quentin's questions "Is it geological?" and "Is it a mountain?" bringing suspicion upon him, but he wasn't the Insider either. It was Stanley!

We played again, after Martin explained the finer details of the rules to Quentin, and this time it was the smaller of the two Joes who was the master. I guessed correctly ("baseball") but only Katy voted against me. Maybe there's something about him, but we chose Quentin again and we were wrong again because it was Stanley again.

One Joe went to bed and we split into two groups and played a couple of short games until Ian was due to arrive. Joe, Katy and Martin played Maskmen. Katy won with a whole round still to play but was a little put out to see her magnificent lead shorn down to a narrow victory by the end.

Katy 4
Joe 3
Martin 1

Sam, Stanley, Quentin and I chose Spy Tricks, a game I had no recollection of despite having played only a few days before. Sam won big in the final round, putting his double bet onto the correct card, and just squeezed past his son into first place.

Sam 25
Stanley 24
Quentin 20
Andrew 11

Now Stanley went to bed and Ian arrived. We rearranged the groups into me, Martin, Sam and Ian playing Senators while Joe, Katy and Quentin played Let's Make A Bus Route. That game ended

Joe 60
Katy 47
Quentin 47

And then they moved on to Good Little Tricks, a devilish card game whose basic premise escapes me at the moment. There was a fair amount of people claiming they were going to "shoot the moon," though.

Joe -21
Katy -26
Quentin -34

We were still playing Senators when they were done, so they bashed out a quick single round of Little Tricks:

Quentin 0
Joe -7
Katy -20

Meanwhile, over in Ancient Rome, we'd seen all kinds of history flash before our eyes. After Sam had the rules explained to him, our first game was over in minutes as the fourth War card game after only five or six rounds.

Sam 8
Andrew 7
Ian 6
Martin 6

We set up to play again and this time it was more of an epic, with the fourth War card not coming out until the very end. But before then all manner of events unfolded. I was hit by Civil Unrest and a lack of cash during some extortion, meaning I lost two senators but I was then able to cash in two high scoring sets of cards for 51 in cash which I used to buy my way into first place. Other players took turns being in last place, first Ian then Martin and finally Sam. But that fourth War never seemed to arrive and Ian ran out of cash, meaning he slipped further back while my frugal final rounds got me first on a tie-breaker.

Andrew 11 + 8)
Martin 11 (+2)
Sam 10
Ian 9

Finally we were all together for a game of Just One. We started well, but soon duplicates started to creep in. Sam did well to get 'cocoon' with only 'chrysalis' and 'enclosed' to guide him. Joe was less fortunate, having the impossible task of getting 'panda' from the two remaining clues (after four bamboos wiped themselves out) which were 'diplomacy' and 'eyes'. Once again we were "wow, not bad" according to the score sheet.

There was one more game in us thanks to generous offers of lifts from Joe and Quentin, and it was Fuji Flush. I was first to one card but just couldn't push through. Mid-game, Katy was doing so badly that she claimed she had more cards than when she started. But it was Quentin who was able to join his last card to another already on the table and push through for victory.

Joe's best Godfather face during Fuji Flush.

Quentin 0 cards left
Andrew 1
Martin 1
Sam 2
Katy 2
Ian 3
Joe 4

And that was all. As we set off, I somehow managed to lose my phone so at the moment I have no photos from the evening, but hopefully I'll put them on later (EDIT: done it!). Thanks to everyone for a splendid time.