Bee-curious

 It still feels like a rare treat to be able to leave my flat on a Tuesday evening and arrive at the games venue in barely five minutes. And so I was second to arrive at Joe's, pipped to first place by Sam. Ian, Katy and then Martin were next to join us, with Martin declaring his happiness at the Solid Six being in attendance.

We began with Team Trio, a new game to me but simple enough that I understood it by round two. Simply ask an opponent (or the other member of your team) what their highest or lowest card is. They have to reveal it, and then you continue to ask others, hoping to make a three of a kind. Any reliance on memorising what people have is ruined slightly by the occasional swapping of cards between team mates.

Martin & Sam won the first two tricks, followed by a brace for Katy & I. Joe and Ian got on the scoreboard but then Sam and Martin got a three of kind of sevens, which is an insta-win. But they were winning anyway.

Martin & Sam 3

Katy & Andrew 2

Ian & Joe 1

Then we split into two groups of three people. Martin, Joe and Katy played Big City: a sort of Sim City game from the 90s with its dour functional pieces contrasting with the exciting triple layered plastic inlay.

As they set up, Katy told us she'd almost seen a dead body: her neighbour hadn't been seen for a few days and she and someone else went into the house. Katy chose to investigate the bedroom while the other checked out the bathroom and that's where the neighbour was found.

And after that cheery note, they set forth into various civic planning adventures. A world in which Post Offices score double next to a street car or city hall and triple if it's next to both. A world where Martin can say “It's church time!” and no one thinks he's lost it. A world where Katy can have a park taken away from her by Joe and Martin and be livid about it for several minutes. She was already in last and without that, she never stood a chance

Martin 118

Joe 103

Katy 79

Meanwhile, Ian, Sam and I played Bees In Space, or Apiary, to give it its proper name. It's a new twist on space exploration, with a curious emphasis on making honey and wax as much as discovering new planets.

The mechanic is fairly typical worker placement except your workers’ value (1-4) influences what they can do. Level 4 bees are most powerful but they have to hibernate afterwards and be brought back by taking an action.

The board is rather fussy and I admit in the first couple of rounds I was a bit lost. Ian seemed to know what was going on as he devised a new dance that would make cheaper honey. Which I suppose is a priority for Space Bees. 

We approached the final round I became acutely aware that the score track went up to 100 but me, in the lead, had only scored 15. But the game is all about end of game scoring and any confidence I might have had from being in first quickly dissipated as Ian came from last into a slim first. It was all very close.

Ian 75

Sam 71

Andrew 70

Apiary was a longer game than Big City so while

we finished, the other three played Robo Tricks. After Big City, this was a game they could all enjoy.

Joe 7

Martin 2

Katy -5

Since Robo Tricks was a bit long, Sam, Ian and I played Stomp The Plank. Amazingly, for such a GNN favourite, this was my first game. We played twice. In the first, Ian repeated his trick of coming from last to first and in the second, my cautious chiseling tactic proved successful.

Now we were a sextet we joined together for a rousing game of So Clover. We seemed to finish quite quickly. So fast that we began deducing our first clover while Katy was still in the toilet. 

Katy's clover had a lovely reference to our recently departed (not dead) gamer friend Gareth. She used his name to clue the words “Beard/Patron.”

We did okay with 32 out of 36.

Since that seemed to be over too quickly, we set up for one more go. This time, though, the moans of impending defeat filled the room. But, in the face of adversity, we proved ourselves to be highly resourceful. 

Sam clued Mug/Dream with Grande and Joe clued Hardware/Smell with Cordite (his second word of the evening that we needed a definition for). Katy saved Martin's clover when she spotted that Bubble went with Invincibility, even though I pointed out that bubbles are pretty much the opposite of invincible. 

I was relieved when my four slightly dull clues were solved and full marks to Katy for cluing Television/Crow with carrion. “Carry on.” Get it?

We had a perfect score as we began Ian's clover. We obsessed over his reasoning for pluralising Circuses. It made us think that our first guess of Clown/ring must be wrong, since surely he'd only write Circus. In the end we chose clown/universe and we were correct! A perfect score! 

36 out of 36!!

So with the afterglow of achievement still warming my veins, I set off. Sam said he could be tempted by a quick fifteen minute game and later I received a photo from him with the comment “Incredibly rude game of medium!”

Thanks all. See you soon.

The Snacks Etiquette

New Player, new host: Mel and Ben were entertaining last night as GNN made its' way to Easton. Despite some absences, we still began the evening a seven, including Ian, Katy, Gareth, Martin and myself - and kicked things off with the lesser-spotted Just One. Katy was first to guess her word (pipe) and despite some duplicate clues and a rubbish clue (mine) overcame her doubts and got us off to a good start. We then proceeded to obliterate the Just One challenge, and the longer our good form improved the more pressure was on to not fail, a tension broken only by Martin tipping Ian's beer all over him. 

Katy's turn arrived again and once more she was the victim of duplication. However Martin and I felt with the clues bollock and naked, she might get stark. It wasn't to be, but a sterling effort from all concerned. 

We broke into two groups, with Martin Ian and Ben playing Whale Riders and the rest of us the Ticket to Ride-esque and delightfully named Lisbon Tram 28. We were unsurprisingly in Lisbon, driving trams. Instead of Ticket to Ride's secret objectives, however, the goals are all open and it's a race to complete them. Turns are simple: take two actions from moving, picking up passengers, dropping off passengers, or (occasionally, at certain spots in the city) upgrading your tram. 

As well as the problem of other players delivering to the tourist destinations before you do, there's also the fact the trams can (and will) shunt each other out of the way, leading to occasional cries of indignance or despair. You do get a free card when shunted (and when you shunt) but that's sometimes a hollow reward when your tramming plans are in tatters. Despite the simple rules we all had our moments. Katy professed confusion, Mel forgot to pick up cards, Gareth shuffled his cards into the deck. They finished Whale Riders:

kitchen towel expansion

Martin 27 / Ian 20 / Ben 16

...And we were still going. I thought it might be half an hour to go. Katy whispered "A bit longer" so they began playing Hit Z Road, despite protestations. Meantime our trundling trams were suddenly ramping up the pressure, and we rattled through the destinations at high velocity. 

Tram 28 has a neat little twist on scoring. As well as the points on the card when you deliver passengers, you also build a tableau out of your claimed destination cards, which have little half-tickets down the sides. If you create a 'whole' ticket in doing so, you score an extra point. I managed four of these, which (I think) was more than anyone, but it wasn't enough to beat Katy:

Katy 12 / Sam 10 / Mel 9 / Gareth 8

The other end of the table were still fighting off zombie attacks:

So we broke out Medium, the game of one of the games of word connections. Gareth and I got off to a flier when we connected these words on a second guess:

Initially Gareth said camping and I said healthy (I think) before we both landed on 'outdoors' (I think) and nabbed some points. After that, Medium fell apart, as we perpetually managed to all dance around the lines of communication without quite matching them up. Various people played their psychic links, mostly to catastrophic failure. 

But there were exceptions: Mel and Katy, despite the peer pressure and scorn of the table (particularly after Katy connected chips and bottle with the word mustard) managed to pick up points, and I think Gareth and Katy did too. I floundered. 

Katy and Mel: 13 each / Gareth 6 / Sam 5

Hit Z Road had finished by now too, with only Martin making it safely to the west coast. Ben survived a six zombie attack only to subsequently expire in sight of the ocean. Ian was first to die. 

Gareth had an early start, so now departed. With an empty table before us, we split again into groups of three. While Martin taught Trick-Taking in Black and White to Katy and Ian, Mel, Ben and I played the roll-and-write of Dizzle. 

It's a roll-and-write so there's no onerous rules confusion here: a chunk of dice are rolled and players draft them to their sheets: when all dice are placed (or everyone has passed) the squares are crossed off. You score for completing rows and columns, covering gems and linking jigsaw pieces. If you cross off a bomb it's -2pts for everyone else, and the bomb square becomes non-navigable for them. 

Catch number one is the dice must match the pip value on the sheet. Catch number two is you must place dice orthogonally adjacent to previously-placed dice, and if you can't legally do so, you can either drop out of the round or reroll the undrafted dice. But if you reroll and still don't get a die you can place, you have to return a die from your sheet to the pool - a wrinkle with teeth that bit all of us on the arse at one stage or another. We played twice, me winning the first game and Mel the second. 

Meanwhile Trick-Taking in Black and White was raising much mirth. 

The cards are numbered from 1 to 30-something, with numbers in both black and white on both cards and ascending one way (eg black) while descending the other (eg white). I think I'm right in saying the player who leads announces which colour they're leading. Beyond that I didn't catch enough of what was going on, but it seemed to go down well. Martin won yet again!

Martin 10 / Katy -5 / Ian -8

Then there was just enough to time to wrap things up with a blast through Cross Clues, and blast through we did, swaggering our way to 23 out of 25. 

nearly there

An excellent night. Ian's trousers were even dry by the time we left. The evening's opening conversation about games night snacks etiquette was also answered by the time we were done: it's eat too much and then ask someone to take the bowl away. 

Party to Something

GNN started 2020 in celebratory mode, with an open-door policy at mine and Sally's house, and as well as the usual massively-unhealthy snacks there was also the marginally-safer ones of crostini and tapenade, courtesy of Sally. There was also mackerel pate, a variety of cheeses, cloudy lemonade, and a bowl of salad that - as Martin noted nine hours later, slowly turned into a bowl of wilted leaves.

still lurking this morning

But before that could happen, Adam T and Celena were first to arrive, promptly joined by Martin, Sarah and Effie. After summing up the options, Effie left the adults to it and went to chill with Stan and Joe. Arthur joined her when he rocked up with Hannah (who came by bus), and then shortly after that Adam H arrived on two wheels. Then Joe walked in too.

But for a long time - literally, hours! - people talked. It almost reached the point where the blog would need to be renamed, but fortunately Andy Mosse arrived with his boy Finn, and brought Team 3 with him. After it sat glowing radioactively for long enough on the table, the collective curiosity of myself, Martin, the Adams and Joe couldn't be resisted any more and with Andy's help we cracked out a quick couple of plays.

The game takes the concept of see/hear/speak no evil and parcels out those communicative restrictions on three team-mates, one of whom must describe the structure they have to build (from tetris-type blocks) whilst not speaking. The second must communicate the message verbally to the third, who can't see anything. It can be played co-operatively or competitively, and our second game was the latter, with Andy, Joe and Adam H beating Martin, Adam T and myself. Maybe it was the combination of hosting, or too much cloudy lemonade, but I found it very stressful.

Later - I think it was later - Ian arrived, and as the daylight began to fail, so did Steve and Anja with Louie and Lennon. Whilst the older kids disappeared to the loft to watch Pixels, the younger crew stayed in the front room with more suitable viewing, as we were all charmed by Lennon distributing snacks, often directly into our mouths. By this point there were two rooms full of potential gamers. In the front room, Sally and I joined Adam, Hannah, Steve, Anja for what turned out to be a triumphant crack at Just One - not only scoring the maximum 13 but 2 bonus points as well. which is even more impressive considering the game probably took about an hour all told.

Meanwhile in the kitchen there was an epic game of Facecards playing out. It took even longer than Just One, so God knows what took place. Everyone seemed very happy with it though.

As the day faded away, so did the 'non-gamers' with various children and relieved parents making their way home so the regular GNNers could go full-nerd. Sally had nowhere to go, but seemed happy to stay. To be frank the order of events gets extremely hazy here, I think due to all the cheese I was eating, but I think this was when a huge game of 7 Wonders got played.

Andy Mosse had only played 7 Wonders Duel, but was otherwise new to things, and initially had Joe beside him as his trusty assistant. But then I stole Joe away to play two games of Blitzkrieg! which we won one apiece and celebrated in our joint mutual destruction. I think Martin won 7 Wonders, after which Adam and Celena departed... in the front room, Sally taught Steve and Anja Yokai. I'm not sure how they got on, but after the first game Sally was ashen-faced in the kitchen, muttering something about rules.

Somewhere around here Res Arcana got played.

I think it was while Adam, Katy - freshly arrived - Ian and I played Flamme Rouge. As we were setting it up, Chris walked in the door - passing Steve and Anja en famille on the way out - and happily sat down to join us. A while ago Flamme Rouge was a regular at the GNN tables, and it was nice to play it again even if the card system initially seems slightly counter-intuitive. I've personally found that the backs of all cards are the same colour a little bewildering, even if it's necessary to hide those exhaustion cards...

While we were pedalling through the Alps, a boisterous Medium was played out at the other end of the table, with much roaring of disbelief and approbation. I've no idea which team won, but they wrapped things up the same time as Adam H sailed over the line in Flamme Rouge.

I'm now exceedingly hazy on things but I think it was towards the end of these games that Andrew and Anna arrived to find a scene of game-related debauchery in full swing. Stan and Joe were so screened out they were taken for a walk by Sally, Andy and Finn departed, and a game of PUSH was initiated by Joe that Anna was shanghai-ed into, whilst at the other end of the table something else occurred. I'm not sure what. It may have just been wild consumption of cheese. EDIT: looking at photos I see we played Tiny Towns. This was after Adam and I tried to play Ecos: First Continent, only to have Martin rule it out by repeatedly barking "no!" even though he wasn't playing.

I think I blanked it out because of my awful building-site finale - Adam won this, followed by Chris and Ian.

However around mid-evening seat-changing occurred with Just One back on the table in the kitchen while Ian, Adam and Chris suffered the indignity of finding out a crucial rule I'd missed in Word Domination: the game of allegedly taking over the world but actually just spelling things.

It's a neat little system of claiming cards by using the letters on them, the catch being you need to claim them in subsequent turns, and may be bumped off in the meantime by other players. I'd not realised the board actually grows during play, however, and we hurriedly implemented the rule when I found it in round 5. Despite Chris' vocabulary and my alleged (by Adam) always-winning at word games, it was Adam's shrewd strategic brain and claimed another win.

In Just One, meanwhile, four people clued gatherer, leaving poor Katy to try and guess Hunter from Joe's clue Orion. There was a substantial bout of cheating here, none of which sadly helped.

Sally couldn't be persuaded to stay up for another game, and so we were reduced to eight - Joe, Martin, Katy, Adam, Anna, Andrew, Ian and myself - for what would turn out to be the last game of an epic session - Pairs. Although I was barely drinking, my cheese and sugar intake had reached gargantuan proportions and I don't know what happened here at all, although I do recall Martin serially going bust on his first card flip and Katy doing well. I think she won - I went to the toilet, and when I returned, it was all over.

And so was the night!

Although our incongruous - for GNN - start of prolonged chat was rather sweetly mirrored at the end, as we sat around the table almost like normal people before we realised the time was 11pm and Ian and I were starting to yawn.

I'm pretty sure I've missed out some games as well as plenty of high points. A big bundle of fun and lovely to have so many of us under one roof at the same time! Thanks to everyone for coming and look forward to seeing some/all of you very soon... Tuesday?

One, two, three...

I was late to this week's games night, arriving just as Stanley stepped down from the table, allowing me to take his place in a game of Medium. Joe, Sam (hosting), Martin and Katy were also there and had already played three games of Hurlyburly, with Katy winning twice and Sam once.

In Medium, each player forms two teams with the two people either side of them. Thus I was paired with Katy (on my left) and Sam (to my right). Each player has a hand of cards with words on them, and each couple takes turns to play cards to the table and on the count of three both say a word that links the two. If you both say the same word, you pick up a scoring jewel type thing. If not, then you get the chance to try again with the two new words.

Morse?

For example, Katy played "toaster" and Martin replied by playing "butter." On the count of three they simultaneously spoke, with Katy saying Crumpet and Martin saying Bread. Martin, appalled at this missed easy win, asked the rest of us if we all thought "bread." I said yes, but Sam said he'd thought of "knife" giving us all a glimpse of what Martin, Katy and Sam usually put in their toasters. Anyway, Katy and Martin went again to try to link Crumpet and Bread. Katy said Jam and Martin said Muffin. With an air of desperation, they tried again but still couldn't gel, saying Cake and Scone.

The highlight was Martin and Joe. The words were Hospital and Band. Martin said "wrist" and Joe said "aid." A fail but surely those two new words pointed to only one thing. Joe seemed reluctant to admit that he was thinking what everyone else was thinking but he came good when it mattered

"1, 2, 3, wank." they chorused. And a little bit of gaming history was written.

I struggled a bit. Sam and I were on different wavelengths and Katy confused me by pairing my Caribbean with the word Telescope and then saying Submarine. Was Caribbean Telescope slang for a submarine? It baffled me all evening until she and I were walking back home and she realised that she'd got telescope confused with periscope. She still did well, though.

Katy and Martin 6
Andrew and Katy 5
Sam and Andrew 4
Joe and Sam 3
Martin and Joe 3

After this was another new word game called Letter Jam. In this game each player is given a five letter word made up of five cards with letters on, that they do not know. Every player has one letter at a time on show such that everyone else can see it but them. Then people discuss what words they can make out of the visible cards, plus a wild card and a "public" card which everyone can see.

"I can make a three letter word that uses the wild card," someone may suggest. If no one can think of anything better (unlikely) then that word is spelt out by handing out numbered tokens. For example, Sam would get the 1 token since he had the D, the 2 token would go on the wild card since no one has an O and Martin gets the 3 token since he has a G.

After several rounds the idea is to work out each of your letters and, therefore, the word. Everyone except me succeeded, having been stymied by the W (I thought my word was Chats, turned out to be Watch). But it was fun. And I especially liked the entirely nonsensical scoring system. We ended with 66 points, which relates to three strawberries which, in turn, relates to "it's yummy."

So, having scored Yummy, we continued with the co operative theme with Die Crew. Finally, I got to try this exciting new trick taker. I was eased in with mission 2. We failed and after the second attempt we decided to skip the easy intro and go back to where they left off: mission 15. Now we started to succeed as we left Mars and set off towards Jupiter. We cleared 15, 16 and 17 before failing on 18 and Sam's ambivalence towards another try saw us finish up there, somewhere near the asteroid belt.

Next we played Karambolage. It's meant to be for four players max, but Sam insisted it could be played by one hundred players... although the last eighty might not get a turn.

Joe had a case of the Can't Stops as he racked up a six point move but kept going for one move too many and lost it all. I specialised in near misses - it looked like I knew what I was doing but I was actually clueless. Sam took an early lead but Martin hit 10 points to nab the win.

Martin 10
Sam 7
Joe 0
Katy 0
Andrew 0

Then Katy and I left at a sensible time, leaving the three remainers to play The Mind Extreme. It seems they beat the curse of round six and got to round nine, as Sam texted me later. Thanks all for a surprisingly team based evening.

Photo credit: Sam.