Pork Scything

Saturday. Just before Ian and Andrew appeared at the door at 7.30 the boys debated what to play. With surprisingly little stress, Spyfall was chosen. We set up around the table, and after a few moments of exploratory questioning, I wrongly accused Andrew of being the spy - it was Little Joe. Then Stanley, as the spy, correctly guessed our location. Two-nil to the spies! Finally the non-spies won a round when Andrew outed himself but got the location wrong.

The boys were packed off to bed whilst Andrew and I did our best Derren Brown impressions in order to get Ian to play Terraforming Mars. Andrew even managed to get him to open the box and unfold the board. Then I lobbed in rules-explanation hand-grenade.... would he? Could he...?

Our NLP expertise still needs work. However our lust for exploring and resource-management was sated by the setting up of Scythe. I can't get enough of this game; for some reason it really pushes my buttons. Ian had a quick rules-refresher and we were off! Despite it only being his second play Ian's early showing was strong, as he was first to get a mech out and begin exploring the landscape.

But though there are many paths to victory in this game, you make yourself unpopular at your peril. Ian's ability to take two options on Encounter cards, and the temptation to take the most powerful (and unpopular) ones kept him languishing in the doldrums of the proletariat's estimation, whilst Andrew and I courted them rather more graciously. Whilst Andrew populated the south with his seemingly-Catholically-minded workers, I spread my workers far and wide, encouraged by their ability to swim.

Outside the world of the game, we opened up Ian's bag of pork scratchings and Andrew announced he could feel the consumption of each piece shaving minutes off his life.  I made my way to the Factory and then triggered the game end by getting my last two stars down in one turn.

Sam 75
Andrew 48
Ian 33

As Scythe was packed away we decided on its' polar opposite in gaming terms: Push It. This is always fun, and especially so when everyone is high on pork. Fantastically awful flicks seemed to be the predominant feature, but Ian seemed to be the person most in control of himself:

Ian 11
Sam 7
Andrew 4

We followed this with Love Letter. This is one of Ian's go-to games in terms of results, but Andrew's astonishing telepathy was what decided it. Of his five guards played in three rounds, four of them guessed correctly:

Andrew 3
Sam 1
Ian 0

Andrew went ti get the next game, and returned with this mysterious bulb

"What kind of game is that?" he asked in dismay.

We played Take it Easy. I began calling different types of cheese, and ran out after about fifteen of them, calling simply "cheese" each tile for the remainder. Andrew and Ian didn't seem bothered. And cheese seemed to be rather lucky for me, as I replicated my recent score of 222! Andrew then called things he used to have on VHS, giving us rare insight into his oft-concealed psyche - as well as his age. "You remember that!" he cried to Ian, who looked blank. Ian called video games that had a pivotal impact on him. I didn't realise there were so many. It was like someone talking in latin...

Sam 532
Andrew 463
Ian 375

Finally we bashed through a game of Micro Robots. This is hard enough after a strong coffee, but with all of us now in the Saturday night vibe, it took a humungous effort to focus our brains. My training sessions with the kids paid off, though, as I managed to pick up the win.

We made plans to force Ian to terraform soon, then called it a night.

Terra Visions

Last night Andrew, Chris and I sat down to play Terraforming Mars, the big hit at Essen this year. Would it stand up to scrutiny? Because scrutiny is Chris' middle name - he'd prepared for the game intensively, as his clarifications to my rule explanations revealed. I'd watched a couple of reviews and Andrew had done no prep at all. From the get-go we were slightly concerned that Chris seemed to know his Martian onions.

But to the game itself: as the name suggests, players are in the act of turning Mars from a barren wasteland into a garden teeming with life. At the start, we've only just arrived and are merely cracking our corporate knuckles. Then we begin building cities, aquifying oceans and cultivating greenery. When the temperature and oxygen levels reach a certain (habitable) point, and all nine ocean tiles have been placed, the game will end.

early Mars, as seen by Andrew

Meantime we are buying project cards (3 money per pop) and then activating them (variable costs) to either do stuff on the planet itself (the aforementioned terraforming) or bump up your productivity: all players have their own corporate mats that generate money, metal, plant life and energy at the start of each round. You can turn that plant life into greenery hexes and use that energy to heat up the planet. Both reward you with points. You can also spend actions to claim milestones (for stuff you've done) or pay for awards (for stuff you hope to do, or have done and don't want to be out-done). Because of the variety of cards, and the fact you can take either one or two actions on your turn - there's a lot to think about.

energy

Chris surged into an early lead and stayed there. Andrew paid money every round to look for life, and never found it. I generated lots of energy and heat, but kept forgetting I could pay for my expensive cards by using metal rather than money, even though the whole structure of my final round was based on doing so. However even if I'd remembered, I wouldn't have caught Chris, who was decreed the best Terraformer by a very respectable margin:

Chris 80?
Sam 69
Andrew 50something

the vague scores are based on what I remember, and the tantalizing image below.

Andrew's cube hidden top left, Chris' hidden top right

Including rules explanation to Andrew we'd terraformed Mars in just under three hours. Not bad if the human race is ever in trouble, but rather long for a board game. I would hope that play-time is going to drop significantly, as although I enjoyed it a lot, three hours is a bit long for me.

We decided on a quick palette-cleanser to finish on, and busted through a three round game of tournament Raj. I won every round, but the game was most notable for mine and Chris' habit of playing the same card on the negative tiles, ensuring poor Andrew picked them up no matter what tactic he went for:

Sam 84
Chris 45
Andrew 10

And then we played Micro-Robots! My boys love this game of quickly-figuring-out the way to get the robot from one space to another, but it's not for everyone. Chris watched the whole game in silence, broken only once in order to get his move fractionally wrong. "I'm never playing that again!" he announced at the end, in the manner of a man who has better things to do (i.e. terraforming Mars).

Sam 5
Andrew 3
Chris 0

Verdict on Terraforming Mars from me was that it felt like a winner, but one that needed Raj played after it. It's more interactive than it first appears too, as you can beat each other to the punch on numerous things, and even blow each others' resources up! I need to play again soon.

Micro Wave

The last night of my marathon three-and-half weeks of gaming almost-every-night began with Stanley, Joe and I playing Micro Robots. This is a spin-off (I think) of Ricochet Robots, which I've never played (or wanted to) but it sounded like a fun thing to do with the boys.



The board is laid out randomly and dice are rolled to determine a starting position (certain colour, certain number) and end position (likewise). If you play the game properly (we just worked as a team), then everyone works out in their head how to get the 'robot' from one to the other - you can move orthogonally to a matching colour, or a matching number. If you can do it you announce how many moves you can do it in, and then - theoretically - prove it.

Both boys liked it and Joe - who often insists on playing in a 'team' with me - really came into his own, figuring things out quicker than Stan or I a couple of times.

So come 7.45 I introduced the game to Andrew, who also seemed enamored. It's more puzzle than game, really - the game aspect is the race to work out the puzzle - but rather sweet nonetheless.

Moments later Adam walked in, and with very little discussion, we set up Scythe. It was new to Adam but having taught it to a few people recently, we sped through the introduction and began the game. As ever, there is no combat in the early stages, but as the first to get my mechs out beyond my own territory, Andrew and Adam started talking as if there would be.

My special power was being able to take the same actions as many times in a row as I liked (usually, you have to change action on every turn) and it did come in handy. I ran away from Adam in order to complete my goal card, and travelled far and wide claiming the Encounter tokens. But my success was partly down to Adam's lack of familiarity with Scythe - he forgot his special power of stealing combat cards before a fight. Had he remembered, our two vital face-offs could have ended differently. As it was, I stole all his lumber and then successfully fought him off late-game having hinted I wasn't going to bother.

As a result I'm not sure how much Adam enjoyed it, but hopefully he's intrigued enough to try it again before too long. I do like this game.

Sam 62
Adam 38
Andrew 32

Andrew would have finished second except, not realizing the game was about to end, he vacated the Factory hex and let me steal in at the death.

Because of Scythe's delightful brevity it was not yet 10pm, so we broke out Take It Easy. We also broke out the cheese and biscuits too, and discovered Adam's dislike of olives (not at all) and indifference to grapes (I think he ate about three). Andrew and I stuffed our faces like the gannets we are.

Then Andrew launched into round one of Take it Easy, calling Beatles songs. There was nary a pause from his encyclopedic memory, but he did cry "this is terrible" very early on: on his fifth tile. That has to be a record. My efforts at calling words ending with 'ology' only lasted as far as cosmology, theology and biology before I sidestepped into psychiatry, trigonometry etc, before eventually saying anything that ended with an 'ee' sound: easy, doozy, floozy, etc.

Pathetic! But at least I won.



Finally we tried our hand at FUSE. I'm not sure if I dealt out too many cards again, but it felt nigh-on impossible. We ran out of time with five cards still in the stack - although four of them were Fuse cards. I would have been up for another stab at it, but time was a-pressing, so our evening came to an explosive close.

Thank you for your time, gentlemen!