The Sponge and Nestle

Anja and Steve were our hosts last night, so we kicked off the evening with an update on the latter's fly-by-night plumbing activities. What does Anja do when Steve is hurdling rooftops with a tap spanner in his belt? Maybe she mixes cement. But in this instance she was getting Lennon to bed, so we began without her, kicking off with Meister Makatsu, new to Steve, but familiar to the rest of us: Pete, Martin, Joe, Ian and myself. 

 

We'd only just kicked off when Anja and Louie materialised, happy to watch and wait as we played out Knizia's tricks-are-bad semi-trick-taker. If I knew the tie-breaker rule before I'd forgotten it, so was interested to hear that if points leaders are tied, whoever holds the Meister Makatsu token wins instead. I decided early on to try and engineer this position for myself, but though I had the card I needed in the last round, I didn't have the circumstances.

Ian 7 wins on tie-break
Steve 7
Martin and Sam 11 each
Pete 13
Joe 'a horrible amount' 

We split into two groups: Pete, Steve and Ian joined me for Medina as the other four played 2 Win. 

On our end of the table I talked newbies Steve and Ian through Medina's thankfully-simple rules and refreshed Pete, who hadn't - I belatedly remembered - played it with me on Saturday after all (at OGFest). Collectively, we're building the city of Medina, which consists entirely of palaces, stables, and a single street along which citizens march in an erratic procession. 

But it's not a co-operative game: you're trying to maximise the size of your palaces (one of each colour) and position them by the walls and street for extra points. The catch is that as soon as you take ownership of a palace, you can no longer make it any bigger (exception: add a stable). There's some structural ordinance in Medina too: no abutting of buildings, and the walls each side must leave room for a gate (even if, as we subsequently discovered, it's blocked by a building.) We were a short way into our adventure when 2Win finished with a victory for Joe. 

1 Joe

2 Martin

3 Louie

4 Anja

Louie retired to bed, and Joe, Martin and Anja set up Renature, with Joe's new board that changes the mechanics slightly (in ways I unfortunately missed). 

Back in Medina, Steve was constantly foiled by the rest of us grabbing palaces before he could, as I held onto the largest orange palace and Pete held a big brown palace he managed to nuzzle up against the point-giving citizens. 

I forgot to take a picture of the finished thing, possibly because I was focused on sabotaging Steve's late-game attempts to build anything that might push him into the lead. I thought I was harmlessly littering the perimeter with walls but it transpired I was helping Pete nick a wall bonus off Ian. He and I were first out of pieces as Steve and Pete entered a tit-for-tat finale, hedge-betting on who could be the Last Dick. It was Steve, but it wasn't quite enough:

Sam 36

Pete and Steve 34 each

Ian (stolen wall by Pete) 31

Very close! Renature still had a short time to go, so we filled it with the magnetic fun of Kluster. 

Actually not all of the fun is magnetic. Some is in the bizarre rules translation, which tells you to set up the string to make a play area as above, and then instructs players to place their magnets in 'any groove of the sponge'. There were also references to a Nestle which left us none the wiser. The game was fun though, especially after we made the play area smaller. I think we all won once, except possibly Steve. And then Renature finished. 

 

Anja enjoyed her debut, but suffered a little at the hands of non-debutants Joe and Martin. We didn't have precise scores but it was something like

Martin 60ish

Joe 50ish

Anja 40ish

We rejigged, with Martin keen to play Better Letters and me unable to coax Steve into it so I could play Robo Rally instead. He splintered with Anja Pete and Ian into a game of Hey That's My Fish, whilst I sat down with Martin and Joe to make words. 

With no Jo here to maximise the personal scoring I wondered if I might be in with a shout. But my 'shortest word' wasn't as short as Martin's - who had en - and I misread the board, leaving me lagging early on. You can't lag against this pair: Joe was putting in words like liminal and Martin transubstantiation (or similar). Whilst this wordy drama played out, Pete was savaging the other penguins in HTMF.

I'm not sure how he did it, but look at that face. Clearly a self-hating sphenisciphobic. 

Pete 39

Ian 21

Anja 17

Steve 15

They grabbed Misfits off the shelf and went into the front room to play, possibly anticipating me bashing my fists on the table in a fit of pique. 

Better Letters finished just after 11, with Martin narrowly taking the laurels from Joe. 

Martin 50

Joe 44

Sam 32

And I left for home with Misfits still continuing! I heard later from Ian that he caused a huge collapse and Steve jumped in for the win. Whilst that was happening in the front room, Joe was beating Martin at Le Chocolat next door. I don't know much about this other than you're having to split a bar of chocolate and try not to eat - as Martin put it this morning - 'too much shitty orange'. Don't know if there's a score?

Apparently they even considered more gaming with So Clover available, before common sense took hold and everyone went home. 

Lynx: the Freebie for Men

Adam H was first to arrive at my house last night, followed by Adam T and Ian. Having caught up a little on Big T's new life pattern and even discussed Tom Stoppard, we realised we might as well game whilst waiting for Martin and Pete. We played Qork. 

Maybe the less said about Qork the better? It's one of them that seems to raise laughs whilst playing and a happy groan when it's over. But I like it anyway - and it was over pretty fast because our stragglers arrived and we could now play 'proper' games. For what it's worth I was in the lead, and I remarked that this would probably be my last chance of winning tonight. It was meant ironically at the time.

With the full six in situ we kicked off with Meister Makatsu, Knizia's weird deck-dwindling trick-avoider. I remarked that having won my first game, I'd do really badly now. That was meant to be ironic too. 

gamers, with passer-by

Reiner delights in interaction and this is one of his dastardlier affairs, where winning tricks is minus points and winning them late in the game makes everything worse. Points are bad:

Martin 4
Pete 6
Adam 9
Big T 16
Sam 18

Ian - I'm not sure, but he beat me I know that

We nearly split into two groups but Big T suggested Challengers instead, so we set about building our decks looking for synergies that would harpoon the opposition in a mini-game of war. As he was in the middle of the table against the wall, we gave Big T the static spot in the chair-switching and at one stage he asked Martin to get him a beer for the fridge as he was kind of stuck. 

"I'd get you a beer anyway" Martin said.

"I didn't bring any beer" Adam quipped. 

Maybe you had to be there. 

I do have an excuse for this shit pic

I began as badly as always, but then an ocular migraine hit and I had to squint at everything to try and read it properly. Weirdly - or maybe not that weirdly - I won two matches that way, as if the power of comprehension was getting in the way. But the guys to beat were Martin, Ian and the Big T, as Ian just missed out on the final:

Martin 39

Big T 33

Ian 30

Sam and Adam H 17 each

Pete 2

Pete was nonplussed by his score of 2 until Martin told him to flip the trophy over to reveal the actual points, but it was 2 on the other side as well. Scenes!

With my vision now back to normal I got to watch the final showdown. Sadly it was a bit one-sided as Martin had constructed some kind of bonkers combo that regularly gave him a power of 15, causing opponents to scuttle their deck each time they wanted the flag!

look how much Adam is enjoying Martin's triumph

Now we did split into trios, with Martin successfully Shanghai-ing a reluctant Adam into playing Lynx with he and Ian by repeating the offer to go trapping over and over. "Is this a Knizia you got in a trade?" Adam asked him. Martin replied no before adding it was a game he got sent free with a Knizia he got in a trade. 

Gearing up to trap

The rest of us set up Hanami, the bizarrely reskinned Samurai with vicious picnicking theme. I warned Big T that Pete had won this with ease last time we'd played, but didn't listen to - or probably even understand - my own advice. Adam T began building a big presence around Tokyo whilst Pete and I skittered around Japan, laying our hexagonal blankets in the most rewarding spots. If you've not played Samurai (or Hanami) you're basically trying to have the most influence on picnic spots/cities when they're surrounded, to claim the 'celebration' tokens there.

late game 

Having the most of a particular token scores you a whopping single point, so the game often goes to tie-breakers. Allegedly anyway - as with the last time we played, Pete triumphed with two points, ousting Adam into second place. I was nowhere - I had something like 6 out of the available 30 tokens. Great game though!

Pete - most savage picknicker

Adam T - fiesty sandwiches 

Sam - squashed packet of supermarket crisps 

Lynx was still ongoing at this point with the only thing I could glean being that for a game with a grizzly wilderness hunting theme they seemed to be doing a lot of bidding. Big T suggested we embark on a trek of our own with the next in the trick-taking Lord of the Rings series, the Two Towers. I was happy to try it - I have fond memories of the first game even if the lustre wore off before we ever finished the 18 chapters. Things have hotted up in the new edition: the orcs have arrived. 

fuckers

The Crew-esque mechanics and narrative structure remain, but the towers themselves take the form of cards and automatically win tricks they're played in (unless both are played to the same trick). The three Orc cards automatically lose. In the first chapter Aragorn (Adam) must win the most tricks in conjunction with whomever has the black tower. Boromir (Pete) must win two tricks before the towers appear and Legolas (me) just needs lots of forest cards, as though distracted from the quest in hand by botany. 

the road goes ever on and on

We nailed chapter one first time, then moved on to chapter two. Big T made an excellent Aragorn and we saw off a nail-biting distribution of forestry to claim another first-time victory! Well done us. 

Lynx wrapped up now as well, with a series of noises that suggested it may not return to the table any time soon. "Fine" is not a lofty recommendation in these game-rich times for a 90 minute game of bids and Martin reflected again on how it came free, as though looking at a bang average pizza crust left on a paper plate. He and I were up for some Alibis but it was fairly late and people were tiring so we pivoted to our classic of So Clover. 

If you look at the right-hand side of this photo you get a glimpse of what an ocular migraine is like. 

"This is going to be a 36 straight out of the gate" Martin announced, employing irony more successfully than I did earlier. There were some excellent clues here, with Adam H's Showcase for trophy/cinema and Martin's plumber for common/apprentice, but we came unstuck with Pete's clover, failing to perceive more than one association we should have spotted. As always though, a fine way to end. 

30/36

Thanks all. 

Alibi checks out

Another warm evening began with one of those things GNN doesn't have a tag for - conversation. But this didn't last long and soon we were trying to impress Meister Makatsu with our ninja moves, a theme so far-fetched for this game of card-shedding that Martin's inward sigh could be heard as he began explaining it to us. 

We were six: as well as Martin and myself (Sam) Pete, Ian, Adam and Joe clustered around the table. Meister Makatsu is a demanding meister: our goal is to try to not win tricks - of a sort - as each round we play two cards of four, from three potential suits, with the highest in each suit claiming a point - points are bad - unless it's the orange suit, in which case it's two points. Unless it's round two in which case tricks win 2 points (orange 4) or round three in which case 3 (6). Getting rid of high cards early is ideal and there's definitely some luck. You don't want all your high cards at the bottom of your deck. 

But there are also two cards you'll never play, so the last hand gives you something of a get-out clause. I hoovered up more early tricks than felt ideal, but things worked out for me in the final round, when I got nothing at all. It was a game notable for how much it made Martin swear at us. 

Sam 7

Joe 9

Pete 10

Ian 13

Martin 16

Adam 19

Next up was Qork. This an extremely silly real-time reactions game where one player - the Cupper - rolls and reveals two big chunky dice. All the other players have corks on strings on a Qork mat and if the dice are doubles or add up to seven, must whip the corks away before the cupper slams the big rubber cup down on them. If you're caught, you get a point and as with Meister Makatsu, points are bad. If you yank your cork unnecessarily, that's a point. If you're the cupper and you don't catch anyone, that's a point for you. 

It's very stupid. Most of us at some point yanked our corks in a panic and Adam gamely gamed the system by lifting the cup off the dice to hold it immediately over the corks. Perhaps that helped him. Pete's reactions seemed like they could use some work, but on the other hand I'm not sure when this skill has real-world applications. He triggered the endgame by hitting ten unwanted points.

Adam 3
Martin 4
Everyone else: miles behind.

We did a third game with six of us: 2 Win. I think this has been explained elsewhere but it was a first time playing with so many players, and it seemed to go down pretty well. Martin chose to start fairly high and kept b[icking up cards for being the highest until Adam stormed past him into the early nineties. 

Despite his proximity to a century, Adam survived a couple more rounds whilst first Pete Joe and Ian and then myself fell by the wayside. But Martin clung on for the win. 

We split into threes now, with Martin and Joe introducing Pete to an old and fairly brutal Knizia tile-layer called Genesis and myself Ian and Adam opting for Rebuilding Chicago. 

Genesis is pretty simple. Players 'collaborate' on creating terrain types, but fight over majorities with only first and second place scoring. Each area must be at least three tiles, but there's also bonuses to be had for the largest of each terrain type (x2), and the largest of overall x3. There's also obstructions on the board to factor in, meaning you want to avoid the geographic cul-de-sacs that inevitably emerge. 

Final board (face-down tiles are just denoting scoring)

Pete took a debut victory here as Martin fell victim to Explainer's Curse. 

Pete 45

Joe 39

Martin 36

In Rebuilding Chicago we don't have that shared space, but the timing and claiming of events was the most critical in this play that I've yet encountered. 

Ian and I could probably have done more to hamper Adam though: not exactly a whitewash but a solid win thanks to his late-game placing of Landmarks. Thank God Ian ended things before he could build a third. 

Adam 154

Sam 143

Ian 129

In the short time Chicago overran Genesis, they'd played Chocolates, also known as Martin's Revenge.

Martin 25

Pete 17

Joe 11

I missed every chocolate-based photo opportunity as I was so focused on polyominoing in Illinois, but I did manage to snap Martin packing it away, apparently in a fine late-evening mist. 

It was late enough that Adam felt he could clover before bedtime, so that's what we did. Some really good stuff here and oh-so-close to a Record of Legends score of 36/36. We fell just short on Pete's clover which had a slightly unfortunate red herring of rifle, which we thought went with repartee. We should have listened to Adam, who correctly thought it was comedy/tennis. A solid clue, but 34/36 ain't half bad, and a memorable play as well for Martin's workplace tale of an abandoned Zoom call after someone shared their screen in a highly unsuitable manner. Not him, I should make clear.  

 

So we then lost Adam to the night but felt it was early enough that we could play on, and stayed in cloveresque territory with newbie Alibis. 

Like So Clover, it's a word-association co-op, with a theme that floats away in the breeze, although the deduction element is intact: we're collectively trying to work out who the 'criminal' is and we all dealt two of the line-up ourselves. First off we must convey which two we have by looking at the random words on them and attempting to link them in a clue: just like one side of a clover, basically. Then we announce our clues one at a time and everyone ticks off which pair we think that player has on our own little elimination boards.

After that we all announce who we are and hope that at least one other player deduced correctly: if so we can reduce the 'heat' on us by one. Then we'll remove three heat for every player who successfully figured out who the criminal was; the goal being to remove all the heat over three rounds. 

And we succeeded! It was a close-run thing but we swept the board win round three with everyone figuring out that Japan was the rogue word (I forget which superhero it was though). A great success, and a fine way to wrap up the evening.