Third Dan

The muggy Bristol heat almost made for an eighth player last night, with even Sybil subdued by humidity. But we were seven: Joe hosting, Martin, Adam T, Katy, Ian, myself (Sam) and newbie Dan who has just moved in around the corner from Joe, so - who knows? - may feature regularly for the year he plans on staying.

I was a little late and before I arrived they played Panic Lab. I know nothing about it other than the fact there is a Dobble-esque real-time pressure and therefore probably best I was late. Martin, apparently, was the least panicked when they finished.

Then, with Dan's arrival imminent, we split into two factions of Pax Pamir and Chinatown and set up whilst trying to recall all the Dans who have come and gone in the near-decade existence of GNN. There's been at least two. I thought there was three, but then I remembered one of them wasn't called Dan. Anyway: in Afghanistan it was Adam, Martin and myself. Across the other side of the world Joe, Katy and Ian explained Chinatown to now-present Dan. Or Joe did. "The rules are very simple" he assured him. "I just can't remember them."

We had no such issues in Pamir, having played it only last week. Adam and Martin aligned themselves with the Afghans whilst I went Russian. This gave me a bit of a workout keeping up with the pair of them placing armies and roads on the board - in order to score points I either needed the Russians dominant or nobody at all. The latter was more likely.

Normally when Pamir gets played there's one player who gets stuck in stasis - not having enough cash, or stuck with off-suit cards and taking underwhelming turns whilst waiting for the tide to change. Last night was the first time this seemed to happen to all of us simultaneously though; Adam cash-poor, Martin frustrated by the cards and me having to add cards to my court then instantly discard them several times.

On the other half of the table, there were no in-at-the-deep-end troubles for Dan - he seemed to be in his element, channeling the survival skills of the perpetually self-employed as he haggled for position in Chinatown. But beyond that I didn't pick up much of what was going on, as Pamir's inscrutability took all our attention.

When the first dominance card was activated (by the appearance of the second) nobody was dominant, so Adam and I shared non-dominant points: a massive 2 each with Martin back on zero. I was seconds away from a win as Martin - now aligned with the British - removed an Afghan road instead of a Russian one. But he changed his mind! Then as we inched towards the third dominance scoring, I changed allegiance to the Afghans and so did Martin. Suddenly we were all vying for dominance and I was in pole position. I gave the warlords a second gift, and wrapped the game up with the others unable to prevent me scoring:

Sam 7
Adam/Martin 2

Martin's face suggested he was marginally less enamoured of Pamir than last week, and both he and Adam said Pax Porfiriana is less abstracted. In fact Martin's complaint wasn't about the play but the lack of theme. As the winner, I was less bothered by that but I agreed with Adam's summary: It was too hot to play Pamir.

Chinatown was still in full-construction so we tried our luck, literally, at PUSH; Joe's recent purchase of card collection and implosion. I remembered Andrew's success and decided to bank as soon as my cards went into double figures, and despite some swingy dice-rolling, this tactic worked for me too:

Sam 74
Martin 61
Adam 56

To Martin's disbelief, they were still at it in Chinatown, so we played the (not hugely dissimilar to PUSH) L.A.M.A as well. Martin's evening went from bad to worse:

Sam 8
Adam 13
Martin 43

As we wrapped that up, the final roof tile was placed in Chinatown and the scaffolders left for good. When the dust of negotiation settled, the triumphant wheeler-dealer was Dan:

Dan 11,70000
Katy 11,10000
Joe 10,80000
Ian 10,40000

It had been an epic but everyone seemed happy to have lived through it. But with the time now pressing on somewhat, Ian departed for home and Adam T followed him out the door. We were left as a five and that was the perfect number for Martin's new addition to his games cupboard, QE.

I guess QE, unsnappy though it is, is still more snappy than quantitive easing, which is what it stands for. Players each represent a country (apart from me - I was the EU) trying to become the most profitable by bidding for industries. Over 15 turns (three rounds of five) an industry tile is flipped over that will score between 2-4 points, and represents an industry as well as a country. If you buy your own country tile, it's worth additional points to you. If you have diverse industries, that's good - but you can also score points by specialising. Your industries are gathered together in a bingo-like card in front of you, where your other scores are recorded as well.

One considerable catch with QE is that you can bid absolutely anything you like: from zero to fifty trillion and higher. But the player who has spent the most, like High Society, is an instant loser. This leads to a see-saw battle battle between bidding high enough to win and not so high as to promote yourself to status of most-profligate. And the other considerable catch is all bids are hidden from everyone except the auctioneer: when it's your turn, you start the bidding (everyone sees that) and then you get to see all bids and announce the winner, but without announcing the bid itself. Instead the bid is recorded on the industry tile and kept face-down. Everybody has the option of looking at the winning bid too, which is really helpful, but can only use this special power once in the entire game.

It amounted to a weird mix of group-think and second-guessing. Martin claimed the first two tiles to himself and got them, considering where we ended up, very cheaply. Dan started pushing the bids up as he claimed no less than three housing tiles. Katy also seemed to be doing well early on. I had a strong mid-game, but Joe was stuck on one tile and kept being outbid. Determined to get the final one, he hiked up the price to 10,000 and got the tile - but also shunted himself into last position by virtue of money-spent. Dan and I looked most productive, and I pipped him to the win:

Sam 41
Dan 36
Martin 31
Katy 28
Joe 18 and spent most!

Katy and I now plumped for Dead Man's Chest to finish the evening. Martin was against it, not least because the rules are always so oddly bewildering to us, and when I brought Dan to see Joe's game collection he also vehemently insisted I had "twice as many" games as Joe. We also mentioned the blog to Dan somewhere around this point, which was a real "Let's invite him to the club, Michael" moment: Dan realised that despite the relatively light baptism with Chinatown, perhaps wasn't all quite as it seemed.

Martin returned with some options but found Katy was already explaining the rules of Dead Man's Chest to Dan. We all chipped in with some extra clarifications at this point, none of which helped particularly. I suggested since Dan was to my right I start and he can watch us play, but I'm not sure this helped either. It is such a bizarre game, and Dan was unsurprised to go out first (I think), reflecting that "I should never have looked" after his second challenge on Katy. Martin was next to fall (I think), followed by Katy and leaving Joe and I to face off. I guessed his bluff, and - even more bizarre - picked up my fifth win of the night!

1 Sam
2 Joe
3 Katy
4 Martin
5 Dan

With the distant sound of thunder rumbling in from Clifton but the heat still as stifling as when we arrived, it was finally time to go. Another wonderful GNN evening, and hopefully we'll see Dan again. He seemed to be as coherent when he left as when he arrived.

Just the pax, ma'am

A little note to mark yet another game of Pax Pamir on Thursday, the third in three days for GNN and the fourth in four for Sam if you include his solo walk through. This kind of ardent adoration for a game hasn't been seen since... Well, since Orbit, about a month ago.

But Orbit is a pussy cat compared to Pax's wave of rules, trimmed down from the first edition but still a hefty amount to take on board. As three Afghan war lords, Sam, Martin and I placed armies, built roads and sent spies out so that we could gain influence.

We started all loyal to the Russian forces, but I broke ranks first, cosying up to British before too long. Sam picked up a tableau of purple cards since they increase the size of your tableau and also, since the favoured suit was purple, he had a range of free actions to supplement his two free ones.

The first scoring card came out and, thanks to a little luck, a second one followed it which meant an immediate dominance check before Martin could change things in his favour.

Sam was sitting pretty despite our attempts to change the favoured suit away from purple. Martin decided to swap hands with Sam, only to realise he'd given him a card that'd let Sam switch the favoured suit back to purple. And if that weren't enough, another dominance card came out and cash-rich Sam was able to snap it up and score big. He won by being so far ahead that the end of the game was triggered.

I didn't note the scores, but I had no points at all. I'd spent the evening trying things out and not really obsessing over tactics but even I had moments of AP when the cards available all seemed equally good. Or interesting.

After this we played Metropolys, a game rarely seen but was perfectly suited to end the game. Take control of city regions by bidding for them with incrementally higher tower blocks.

Sam was quick to put down plenty of blocks while Martin held back his most powerful for the big moves. I was pleased with my clever move which allowed me to surround a lamp post (one of my secret criteria - I suppose this is important to civil engineers) by creating a dead end that I could bid for and win immediately. But Martin won even if he was so obvious with his moves that Sam and I worked out both of his secret criteria mid game.

Martin 25 ish
Andrew approx 20
Sam 15 more or less

And we were done! At a reasonable hour, too. An evening of two games I'd like to revisit soon.

Passport-Packing Power-grabber Pax Pamir's Poetry

Pamir's - Pam Ayers? Yes?  No? - No. Fine.

Last night I introduced Adam H to the joys/hell that is Pax Pamir 2 as we faced off, two-player, over the historical future, if I can put it that way, of Afghanistan.

For the uninitiated, three coalition powers are hoping to claim the country - or most of it - for themselves: Afghans, British and Russians. The players are tribal leaders hoping to both manipulate events in their favour, and be sure to either A. be aligned with the strongest coalition when points are scored or B. be the busiest player (most discs in play) if no one coalition is dominant.

Although each turn is simple, it's a game of ifs and buts. You always have two actions, but can get extra ones if your cards match the current favoured suit. You can purchase cards from the market with an action, but you have to pay rupees to take them from anywhere outside of the left-hand column. You can play cards to your court (face-up on the table) but if you're playing a card with a region that another player rules on the map, you have to pay for the privilege. Your court limit is three, but you can make it bigger by playing purple (political) suited cards. Your hand limit is two, but you can make that bigger by having blue suited cards in your court. Red-suited cards break ties, but when the red suit is favoured, cards from the market cost more. And so on. It is all, to be fair, thematically sound, but it's also somewhat inscrutable with a fair bit to remember on a first play. I haven't even mentioned spies, who can sneak around the table and destroy opponent's cards, or how influence is measured come the scoring (patriot cards, gifts, prizes) or how you can change your allegiance at the drop of a hat, or how hard money is to come by.

Just like Martin and I on Tuesday versus Adam T, Adam H found himself cash-poor at times whilst I played taxes cards early and kept a steady trickle of rupees flowing. Adam aligned himself with the Afghans whilst I favoured the British, and my previous experiences helped keep my brain from imploding whilst Adam, in contrast, seemed to be getting a migraine. He wasn't helped by the fact the market was getting clogged up with Russian and British patriot cards that he didn't want, causing him to briefly change allegiance to the Russkies before later changing back to the Afghans. One area he was comfortable on was the map, where the Russians were nowhere to be seen and I had to keep chasing after the Afghans with British pieces to keep Adam from hitting an instant win when a Dominance check (scoring card) was activated. I managed to do so, and after the first Dominance card activated my tribe established a 3-1 lead.

actually from Tuesday, but I forgot to take pics

Adam was still scratching his head, but I sensed a sea change away from confusion and towards percolation. He realised he'd done something wrong - I hadn't spotted it, but then I was busy with my own plans - which was a worrying sign. He nearly won the second Dominance check, but was one rupee short of what he needed to pay for. I glanced down at my one hand card and saw I could play a spy with it, and outnumber Adam on discs in play (-discs are spies or tribes depending on their location) and having done so, I activated the next Dominance check for a sudden 6-2 win: any player four points ahead of other players wins instantly. I only wish I could say I'd planned it.

Adam professed not being enamoured but I hope this was first-play-blues. He did sit and stare at the board with the air of someone thinking next time... and reflect on the experience, so I hope that's the case.

I tried to make up for my indulgences and encouraged Adam to choose the next game. We pondered the alcove for a while before settling on the lesser-seen Tsuro: the tile-laying game of dizzy dragons where the last one standing survives. This is an old favourite of ours and it was a shame Andrew wasn't there to see it hit the table again - but we made up for absences by inventing a Team Tsuro variant: both of us had two dragons and two hands, which gave a potential for teamwork between partners: one could push the other into a convenient place to go 'on the attack' and push your opponents dragons into a corner, say.

It was quite lovely to watch - like two sets of dance partners twirling a ballroom intent on assassination. However Adam's end came first at his own hand, as he sent his white dragon flying into the void with little assistance from me. After that he was outnumbered, and my dragons forced him into a narrow corridor from which there was no escape:

Sam wins
Adam doesn't

We fleetingly discussed a third game to round things off, but with 11o'clock approaching and Sally also returned from her night out, we ended things there.

Too many rules

Is it even possible to have too many rules? We at GNN gave it our best shot this Tuesday at Sam's with a couple of AP-inducing semi-epics. Adam T, Adam H, Martin, Ian and myself joined our host around his kitchen table for our first Tuesday evening together in a few weeks. Martin, Sam and Adam T chose Pax Pamir while the rest of us chose Orbit.

In Pax Pamir, the game recreates an Afghanistan riven by divisions and subterfuge caused by the British and Russian forces. Sam had recently bought the second edition, with its charming textile map and large tactile pieces. There was a bit of setting up and rule learning/refreshing to be done and it all looked very complicated.

Not like Orbit, the game that we insist is like Ticket to Ride in space except it isn't really, which is far simpler. In terms of rules, that is. This time we avoided the familiar and newbie-friendly space agencies of NASA or ESA and set ourselves a real challenge. Adam was India (no feul) and I chose Japan (no points) while Ian had the Soviets. Then we put the planets in their astronomically correct positions and we were off. I was a little rusty, but Adam kept things moving. We needed a pause or two to check the rules. I forgot that on returning to Earth, a ship goes back to the docks, and Adam questioned my move of landing on a planet with a different rocket to the one that put me into orbit. It was a challenging game. Ian had only one feul for the whole game since it would've taken so long to put it up to two that he always had something better to do with his turn. This became a real weight around his neck in the latter stages of the game.

Adam looked smart in his three-feul three-speed ships and our only hope was that he'd pick up unfortunate mission cards. I got lucky with mine, getting two cards that I'd already done to offset the one that I couldn't. Ian kept reaching for cards like a madman who'd recently come to regret his lack of investment in fuel.

Adam 49 (including +15 in mission cards)
Andrew 24 (including +1)
Ian 23 (including - 9)

Pax Pamir was still in full swing. If "full swing" is the right way to describe a game in which no one scored any points at all in the first hour. After two hours, Martin had fallen behind 3-3-0 but then a costly mis-step from Sam gave him the win. I don't know what the details were but suddenly he had ten points and they were packing up saying how much they'd enjoyed it.

Martin 10
Sam 3
Adam T 3

In the space between end of Orbit and end of Pax, we three had a few jolly rounds of Love Letter to fill the time until Ian had to go and get a bus.

Andrew 2
Adam H 1
Ian 0

At this point, Adam T also left and the remaining four of us played Two Many Cooks or, as Adam dubbed it, Too Many Rules. After our collective brains had been frazzled by two heavy games, we found ourselves struggling with some of the finer nuances. Such as having to follow suit, except when you don't have to. And how some zero cards are actually tens unless you play them first in which case they are zeroes.

But we battled through yet another trick taker with a twist. Adam said it was all random and then Martin wins, which I think is possibly a game category on Board Game Geek. It was fun. No Texas Showdown, but fun. And Martin didn't win.

Sam 26
Andrew 22
Martin 21
Adam 16

And with that, the evening was over. Only four games played. Whatever happened to our stamina? Our verve? Our giddy reckless stumbling through one game after another? Nevertheless, a good evening and I'd like to get another game of Orbit in soon: I was surprised how rusty I was at it.  Thanks to all. Let's do this again soon.

Bitte, Lemon

This Tuesday was a mild November evening, and Anja and Steve hosted for the first time in a while. Ten gamers were present in total: the two hosts and Chris, Ian, Matt, Martin, Katy, Joe, Adam (making a welcome reappearance) and me.

We split into three groups. On the coffee table sat myself, Anja and Martin, ready to be introduced to Pax Pamir, an exciting recreation of the political upheaval in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century. On one half of the dining table, Ian, Joe, Katy and Matt were introduced to The Last Spike – something to do with railroads. At the far end of the table Chris was delighted to discover that Steve owned a game of Keyflower, and explained the rules to Adam and Steve. Soon the room was humming to the sound of three simultaneous rules explanations.

The first game to finish was The Last Spike: the shortest and simplest of the new games. In fact Joe said he’d been hoping to finish before Pax Pamir had even begun.

Ian 150
Katy 125
Joe 99
Matt 93

On our table, Martin explained the rules to us. The game is set during the time when British, Russian and Afghan forces were battling for control of Afghanistan and aim of the game is to be the one who is most loyal to the strongest army when a Topple card is played.

We were going along quite nicely, Anja and Martin practised their counter-espionage skills on me, and I assassinated one of Martin’s cards to try and gain favour with the Afghan forces. But then, just as Martin was cursing my move for ruining his chances of a win, he realised he could do it anyway. And so he did. After only about maybe forty minutes of play, our epic came to an abrupt halt. It was over so quickly, that I forgot to take a photo of it.

Anja said it was a bit of an anti-climax and Martin later admitted he wished he hadn’t won the game. At least, not so soon. There’s only winners and losers in Afghanistan so, although I was also loyal to the winning Afghan forces, while Anja was cosying up to the invading Russians and British, I can’t claim second place. Joint second, though.

1. Martin
2= Andrew
2= Anja

When we’d finished, Joe, Matt, Katy and Ian were having a rip-roaring game of Can’t Stop. In this game, you roll die and move meeples along a track until (a) you decide to stop or (b) you can’t move and you go back to where you started. Get your meeple to the end of the track and it’s yours to keep. The winner is one who has claimed most tracks. Something like that, anyway.

Joe 3
Ian 2
Katy 1
Matt 0

At the far end of the table, Chris, Adam and Steve were deep in thought over Keyflower. We on the coffee table, though, began another game. This time: Sticheln, the trick taking card game that changes every time you try to pronounce it. It’s like trumps, except that not following suit turns your card into a trump card. And there are ‘0’ value cards, which never win and, most importantly, each player nominates a suit whose cards count as negative points when scoring.

Anja had trouble with the rule about not having to follow suit since it’s so different from the norm. Martin was doing okay, but misjudged the very last hand of the last round. He still had a red seven which would be minus seven points if he won it. He was confident that he wouldn’t since I was going first, so imagine his annoyance when Anja changed the trump suit to red. He got stung as he won the trick with his suddenly very strong trump card.

Andrew 28
Martin 21
Anja 16

By now, Can’t Sop was over, Sticheln was done and finally the scores for Keyflower were being totted up. Adam was absent by now, having left in the final stages (having left instructions with Katy as to what to do) because of family business.

Steve 48
Adam 42
Chris 34

Finally we ended with Pairs, as you probably guessed from the blog title. Nine of us, clustered around a table, getting all excited about the prospect of blueberries.

Matt started badly, being killed of by two peaches, and his luck didn’t improve. Anja, too, faced down Lady Luck and came off the worse for it.

Chris could’ve won, but didn’t realise we were playing until 21 points (the last game he played lasted until 33). Joe, in a moment of melancholy reflection, asked that when we’re all playing Pairs in an old folk’s home that, if he should die before us, that we deal him in anyway and decide amongst ourselves whether Joe would stick or twist. That’s one way to gain immortality, I suppose.

On a lighter note, a mention of the catchphrase “That’s Numberwang!” gained approval, but for some reason gained an increasingly German accent, ending up as “Das ist nummerwang!” while people who could speak the language gave our their scores in German.

In the final round, Martin and I were first and second. Just before Martin was dealt a card, the deck needed replenshing, so Martin shuffled and handed the cards to me, the dealer. I didn’t want Martin’s shuffling to decide his fate so I cut the deck and dealt him the next card.

He was out.

Such drama! And I won, with Joe making a late charge into second.

Andrew 26
Joe 22
Martin 17
Steve 17
Chris 16
Katy 15
Ian 12
Anja 0
Matt 0

On the Division I'm first on points ratio for perhaps the first time ever. Well, that's me done for the season. See you in January!