Hopes go up in flammes

Tonight was an unusual event in that the six attendees were the six most frequent players, and no one else. Where once we had the Core Four, now we have what I considered calling the Solid Six, until I realised it sounded like something from a medical chart detailing different types of faeces.

We were Sam (host), Joe, Martin, Katy, Ian and me. And, initially, Stanley and Joe. I arrived late, and a game of Fuji Flush was in full flow. Stanley was already on his last card, but couldn't push through, picking up three fours in a row. Katy was busy instructing everyone to stop Martin since, with her cards, she was pretty helpless to do it herself.

Ian 0 cards left
Martin 1
Joe 1
Stanley 1
Sam & Joe 2
Katy 3

After this, we split into two. Joe, Katy and Ian played Cities. Sam, Martin and mep layed Flamme Rouge. We went for a random set up, with Sam using his skills honed over years of improvised train track building with his sons, to swiftly put together a stage fit for the Tour de France. Once we'd flattened down a couple of mountains, that is.

I tried to be sensible, but even so I ended up with a lot of exhaustion cards. Mid game it looked like exhaustion cards were the key to finishing the game, since Sam found both his riders with slim pickings in their decks of cards. He had visions of them just stopping mid race, as if they were working to the clock.

As we rounded the final bend, Martin was in first, Sam right on his shoulder and me not out of contention but needing luck with the cards. I got no luck, and neither did Martin. He saw his rider overtaken by Sam, who also managed to edge over the finish line, to end the game and claim the win. An astonishing win, and one that Martin would mention ruefully throughout the evening.

1st Sam
2nd Martin
3rd Andrew


Then we tried Game Of Thrones: Hand Of The King, a simple but deep game of card collecting by moving around a 7 by 7 grid. It was okay, but I wasn't hugely impressed and keen to move on to something else, so when I saw the chance to end the game, I took it, even if it meant I placed last.

Sam 3
Martin 2 + tie breaker
Andrew 2

Cities had ended...

Joe 63
Katy 60
Ian 59

And in an attempt to synchronise with us, they were playing a game of For Sale. There were some mutterings that it wasn't great with three, and also some mutterings from Katy about how badly she was doing. For once, she was right.

Ian 82 + cash
Joe 82
Katy 80

There was then another reshuffle, and Sam, Ian and Joe chose Gold West, while I had to face the two headed dragon that is Katy and Martin. While we thought about our choice, we tried to identify a game once described by Katy that she'd like to try. Something about a market place in the middle. Was it Portobello Market? Was it that game with the walls that I played once and now can't remember? By sheer chance, Pueblo was mentioned, and Katy recognised it as the game she was talking about! So we got it out with the promise of Biblios afterwards.

Katy got a rules explanation and we all got some kind of understanding of the rules regarding placement, until Martin checked BBG and found out we might be wrong.

Martin started well, tucking himself neatly into books and crannies. I, too, was happy with my start, but then I built upwards and then spent the rest of the game trying to hide it. Katy didn't seem happy as she picked up early points when she made rookie errors. But Katy's skill can never be underestimated, and Martin and me (especially me) were hit heavy in the final scoring round.

Katy 37
Martin 45
Anderw 57

Then we played Biblios. Plenty of pessimism and foretelling of doom in the first round from everyone. Bishop cards were especially useless this game. After five had been played, we found ourselves with the dice the same way up as at the beginning.

In the final reckoning, though, Katy won.

Katy 6
Martin 5
Andrew 3

After this we played Eggs Of Ostrich, agreeing to sum our totals over three rounds into one game. I needed a rules explanation midway through the first round, but otherwise we were fine.

Martin 31
Andrew 22
Katy 18


Gold West had finished.

Joe 123
Sam 100
Ian 95



And we were all together again. Since three of us had copies of Push It, we played a game with three teams of two players with three pucks each. Madness. And a possible six points to win in a single round, which is noteworthy in a game where the target is seven.

Martin & Sam got off to a flier with three points in the first round. After this, they only had to stay one step ahead of the rest of us to secure a comfortable win.

Sam & Martin 7
Katy & Ian 3
Joe & Andrew 2

After that, the evening ended with us having squeezed 5 hours and 25 minutes gaming (according to the figures on BGG) into 3 hours of normal time. And we do this every week! No wonder we look so old.

The Division, meanwhile, looks like this...

Pushing through a number two

This week our regular GNN shenanigans found a home at Sam’s place. In the end, there were eight of us. Seven at first (Sam, Ben, Ian, Katy, Matt, Martin and myself) with Joe arriving as soon as he’d found a parking space. We chatted for a while and discovered that Martin had played Lancaster and “hadn’t hated it,” which from Martin is a ringing endorsement of a worker placement game. With eight players present, we all sat around and wondered if Joe’d brought Captain Sonar which is perfect for eight.

He arrived, and we asked. There was a wail of dismay when he realised how many we were and that he hadn’t brought it. And throughout the evening, in the quiet moments between games, he was heard to ask himself “Why didn’t I bring it?”

So what games did we play? We began with an eight-player game of Fuji Flush. This quick if luck-based game was a lot of fun with players ruining other players’ chain of cards only because they have no choice.

Martin explained the rules, and brought our attention to the phrase used in the rules to describe when you successfully survive a round: “pushing through” a card. And when Martin used the 2 cards to demonstrate how the value increases as other players play the same value, Joe used the phrase that now adorns this blog entry.

As for the game, well, it was hard to tell if there was any strategising. But it ended

Katy 0
Andrew 1
Ben 1
Sam 1
Martin 2
Matt 2
Joe 2
Ian 3

After this we split into two groups of four. Matt, Joe, Katy and Ian chose Isle of Skye while Martin, Ben, Sam and Andrew tried Martin’s new game HMS Dolores. It’s a quick set collecting game where people play two at a time. There are given two cards each, face up, and have to bid over them in a sort of paper, stone, scissors style. Then, the next two players do the same, trying to add to their tableau of cards with the proviso that only the highest and lowest scoring sets actually count for anything.

Before each vote, there is a little discussion between the two players as to what they should do, but these discussions aren't binding, and there was a lot of betrayal. Mostly from Ben. But as we see below, crime never wins. It comes in second, though.

Martin 20
Ben 14
Sam 10
Andrew 9

Isle of Skye was still only about halfway, so we chose another game: Pueblo. It’s a game of placing coloured and non-coloured blocks in such a way as they are as hidden as possible.

Martin read the rules and caught a couple of rules we’d got wrong (oh, how we’ve missed his input) but nothing major. Ben got hit a lot from early on, while I looked to be in third but the final scoring round was kinder to me than to Sam.

Martin 36
Andrew 39
Sam 45
Ben 58

And Isle of Skye ended soon after. Matt was slightly upset that his island had broken roads but Katy was far more annoyed that her lack of scroll tiles meant she fell back from first into third.

Matt 69
Joe 62
Katy 58
Ian 53

After this, we rearranged into different groups of four. Sam, Ben, Matt and Katy chose Fool’s Gold while the rest of us chose Ra. Both games involve a canny understanding of when to push your luck and also quite a lot of laughing at other people’s misfortunes.

Sam explained the rules to Ben, while at our end of the table Joe reminded everyone that this was one of the games that he’s good at. A fair warning? Or sheer vanity? Let us see...

There was a lot of battling for Pharaohs, something that I dropped out of early. In fact I went for very little except monuments. I did just enough not to fall back, but only scored a one in each of the first two rounds.

Everyone else went for a mixed portfolio, with Martin’s Nile looking good for a last round boost of points. However, he was stymied by me and my luck (and his inattention).

In the final round, my first two acquisitions got me a 3 tile and a 1 tile along with my goods. It seems that Martin then assumed I was a certainty to get the lowest-tiles punishment. But he didn’t see (or didn’t take it in) that I got the 13 tile with my last purchase.

How we laughed when my 17 beat his 16 and he had to hand over five points to Ian. That swing was enough to get me the game, as my monuments scored 35 points in the final round.

Andrew 47
Martin 38
Ian 30
Joe 29

Yep, it was vanity on Joe’s part. And with Ian and Martin calling it a night, while we waited for Fool’s Gold to end, he once again reflected on his choice to not bring Captain Sonar.

Fool’s Gold ended with another terrible final round for Katy as all her guys came home empty handed (apart from some silt). The two gem collectors came in first.

Sam 45
Ben 38
Matt 28
Katy 27

Joe and Ben left at this point, so the remaining four had a silly game of Dancing Eggs. This is a game were actions are decreed by the roll of a dice. The idea is to be able to carry as many eggs as you can. The game insisted that Katy carry all her eggs under her chin. She was the first to drop, but she had enough in reserve to claim a win.

Katy 4
Sam 2
Matt 2
Andrew 1

“That’s leaderboard, right?” she asked once we’d finished. Of course. And talking of which...

Complexity 5 and 6

This is the sequel to the post Complexity 4 as Sam and I met up for games not only on the Friday evening, but also on the Saturday during the day.

A quick run through of Friday since I didn’t take many photos.

First up was Codinca, a game of strategy and some puzzling as you move your squares around a 4x4 grid to try and achieve certain patterns before your opponent does. I won.

Then we gave Nippon another outing: we thought it was best to get this out quickly before we forgot the rules and it ends up in the same fate as Canalmania, occasionally suggested but never chosen because no one remembers how to play it.

This time, I got my game up and running faster, with an early consolidation. Then I went mad on ships and trains. Sam, again, built six factories and was poised to make his big point-scoring move in two moves when I pointed out the game only had one turn left.

This gave me a handsome win, with Sam ruing his lost opportunity. Then, as I went to the toilet, before he packed away, he worked out what the scores would have been if his plan had worked. I still wouldn’t have won, but it would’ve been closer.

Then we played Magician’s Night a game played entirely in the dark, with only the luminous characters on the pieces visible. The idea is to nudge your cauldron into the middle while hoping you don’t knock anything off the play area. When you hear the “clunk” of a piece falling, it’s someone else's turn.

With two players, it’s not great. Just a case of pushing one way then the next. Sam won.

Then we played Heck Meck. Sam informed me during the game that on a recent holiday he’d played it against someone and lost 18-0. His luck hasn’t improved much.

I won 16-0.

The next day, me and Ian went round to Sam’s at 1.30 to try Sam’s recent acquisition: Scythe. The behemoth of a game (“It’s even heavier than Caverna,” said Sam) has a big old rule book to go with it’s figurines, cards and meeples. It looked daunting. I’d watched a half-hour walkthrough on YouTube, so I felt I had a handle on the concepts. Sam went through the rules and, before too long, we were off.

Where you sit around the table decides who you are (or vice versa) since every character has their own home base. They also have their own special powers. Mine was “meander,” which does not seem like such a great military strategy, but it meant I got to chose two options during an encounter rather than one. Encounters are like a light-hearted vignette, where a little scene plays out with rewards for the player involved.

One thing I didn’t do mcuh was expand. Unlike Sam and Ian, my empire didn't get bigger than five hexes until the very end. Sam sped to the game-ending criteria of six stars for certain achievements, while I boosted my popularity for the end of game multipliers.

Although Sam had six stars compared to mine and Ian’s four and three, my better popularity meant more returns on what I had, getting me the win.

Andrew 62
Sam 49
Ian 42

Ian had to go home soon to look after a dog while the owner was away. We chose a short game: Bandu. Shorter than Scythe, certainly, but still longer than we’d expected. Ian went out first.

Sam and I built increasingly rickety buildings.

Sam won.

Last photo taken before my tower (front) collapsed

Then we fired off a quick round of Timeline, where Sam won again and Ian and I came joint second.

Then Sam and I did (most of) the Guardian cryptic crossword for last Monday, ate food, and played Pueblo where we both tried the strategy of leaving your neutral blocks until last. It was a close thing.

Andrew 66
Sam 69

So now, Chris was on his way so we set up Scythe again since we knew Chris was keen to give it a try. This time Sam and I chose different characters. This time my special ability was that I was able to win more than two stars for combat. Slightly more aggressive than my previous meanderings.

This time I concentrated on upgrading my skills so everything was cheaper and better. Sam did the same. In fact, he was so efficient that he still only two workers on the board about a third of the way into the game. Chris expanded cautiously and steadily. Perhaps too much so, as his lack of specialising meant he put down fewer stars than the rest of us.

I was on four stars when Sam suddenly sped past me, putting down two stars in a turn and setting himself up for a win the next turn. My previously peaceful plans would take too long, so I had to use my special ability. I initiated two attacks, winning them both for two stars, and ending the game. Although I was less popular than Sam, my multipliers were still good enough to score another win.

Andrew 78
Sam 63
Chris 26

I like Scythe, perhaps because I won both times, but also because of the mix of resource management and strategies. But it does satisfy the same needs as Eclipse does: an epic with many ways to win and lots of different bits to move around.

Then the three of us played Magician’s Night.

Sam charges up the pieces

With three players it’s more fun. Chris won the first one, and then liked it so much, we set it up again. I won the second thanks to Chris nudging my cauldron into the centre while trying to push his own.

I set off after this, leaving Sam and Chris to play Raptor.

What a day. What a couple of days. Thanks for hosting, Sam. Enjoy your travels and see you in two and a bit weeks.

Gold, Blood, Art

Saturday night! Seeing as I (Sam) keep missing Tuesdays, and Sally keeps going out, I was grateful to have Andrew and Chris descend upon the house at 7pm. Whilst the boys caused havoc upstairs (my boys, not Andrew and Chris) we set up Fool's Gold on the kitchen table.

What more is there to say about Fool's Gold? It's the worlds-colliding combo of worker placement and push-your-luck, where the luck-pushing gets progressively more optimistic as the game continues. There's something delightfully funny about miners thinking sod it, I'll pan for gold in the snow, and turning up four bags of silt in a storm.

winter is coming

Chris and Andrew were both new to it, but it's not a hard game to learn. In fact the most confusing thing about it was Chris' money disappearing and Andrew accusing him of being thick, before it transpired that Andrew had been taking Chris' money, thinking it was from the bank. And at this point, we were all pretty sober. Oh, how we lolled etc.

Andrew 45
Sam  44
Chris 36

At this point Andrew and I indulged Chris in a game of Blood Bowl: Team Manager. Neither of us was really yearning to try it; it's a very Ameri-trashy, chit-heavy cross of fantasy and American Football. For a couple of Feld-positive Europeans, that's not exactly a siren, more a rock.

But we are nothing if not recalcitrantly begrudging, so we gave it a shot. It's about a series of football matches played out in a fantasy realm, rather violently. In each round players are contesting the matches via card play: cards have a value and the combined value of all your cards in a game decide who wins/loses. But individual cards can do stuff as well; like grab the ball (if you have the ball, you've more chance of winning the game) tackle (resulting in making opponent cards less effective) sprint (change up a card in your hand for a hopefully-better one) and, er, skull: which get your card a skull token. These are revealed when all cards have been played - they may help, but they may get the player sent off.

touchdown

The skulls make the game very swingy - which is fun, but also slightly undermines the idea of strategic play. I can imagine the longer the game is (we played three rounds) the feeling of arbitrariness growing from a sense of chaotic fun to mild annoyance. But overall the game was fine - Andrew said it was "not anywhere near as terrible as I thought it'd be" which, from his mouth, is praise indeed.

Andrew 22
Sam 22
Chris 18

What next? I brought out several options and Chris' phone chose Pueblo. This was the first play for me that wasn't a two-player, and I decided early on to get all my buildings of my own colour down as soon as possible. This meant I took a lot of early hits whilst Chris - and Andrew in particular - shimmied about, avoiding the eye of the chieftain and taking minimal point penalties. But when our building was completed and he took his final inspection, I was all but hidden, and I moved into a respectable first place. I didn't note the scores, but Andrew was second, and Chris third.

stroppy chieftain looms

We finished off with a couple of short games; Dice Heist is the game of the moment in the Morrison household - Stanley loves it and it goes down well at GNN too. Andrew and Chris fought it out over paintings, whilst I hovered around the edges, trying to pick up cheap heists in St Petersburg. But there was too much hovering, not enough heisting:

Andrew 28
Chris 27
Sam 17

Finally we bashed out Push It, which has not been seen for a few weeks now! At this stage, I was rather merry, and merriness and dexterity don't always go hand in hand. I flicked pathetically as the others jostled for position. Andrew surged off into the lead with Chris hanging on to his coat-tails. But as the pressure mounted around the ten-point mark, anxiety took hold and as the others bashed into each other, I came back into it. With the scores poised at 10-9-9 in Andrew's favour, anyone could win it!

Andrew 11
Chris 9
Sam  9

Lots of fun, thanks gentlemen. Enjoy Tuesday!

Threes

Earlier this week, to celebrate the confirmation of a bit of work (us self-employed types know how to live) I wandered into Area 51 and, 20 minutes later, wandered out with Kremlin under my arm - a feisty, screw-heavy game of political manoeuvring that, having brought home, I realised with it's multiple chits and health-score charts, was probably not going to be my cup of tea. A read of the rave reviews of Mombasa later, and I exchanged games.

The next night I watched a play through of Mombasa and realised that, despite it's high rating on BGG, it looked rather too Feldy even for me. So today I took that back and exchanged it - this time for two (one new, one second-hand) games that Andrew and I played tonight. I also rented a game that the ship refused to sell...

Here's how the games rated with us.

sniffy chieftain

Pueblo was a Kramer and Kiesling creation from the early 90s that was possibly inspired by Tetris. The players are constructed a 'pueblo' for tenancy and the chieftain strides around the complex making sure you're not making your own colours (rather than his preferred neutral colour of beige) stand out too much. Despite the potentially high AP factor it played reasonably quickly - I did well during the building, but at the end of the game the chieftain makes a final inspection, and at that point I came spectacularly undone:

Andrew - won convincingly
Sam - lost convincingly

Next up was Billabong, the rental. This is like a less-boring Chinese Checkers - or a less random Camel Up - as players race their kangaroos around an oasis, trying to be the first to get all their kangaroos 'home'. Kangaroos can move one space at a time, but they can also jump. The catch - or the advantage - here is that they can jump over another kangaroo for as many spaces as they are behind it - thus (as long as there is space on the board) a kangaroo three, four or six spaces behind yours can jump three, four, or six spaces in front of it. And as you can jump backwards, diagonally, and multiple-y, it was deceptively thinky too.

go let it out

Sam - won by about two kangaroos
Andrew - lost

The final newbie was Knitwit, Matt Leacock(Mr Pandemic)'s attempt at a Codenames-style word association - without clues this time. Players add a loop to an expanding board with a word attached, and after that, a spool - each spool ends up with at least one (or two, or three) word to define it. Players then write a definition of each spool: for instance, my living, slow and moving word was Sloth. My electrical word was Dishwasher. And so on. But speed also plays a part, and Andrew defined all the words way before I did:

Andrew 12
Sam 9

words

We both really liked it, but thought it'd be better with more players.

There was just time to bash through that snappy game of Russian Railroads (I won) and several games of Cube Quest (Andrew won most of them, although I beat him once by trying to flick his grunt off and careering down the table into his King...) before calling it a night.