Crossover Crops

 This week's Tuesday night games was preceded by a sort of musical chairs of hosts and attendees popping up and dropping out; and just as four of us (Martin, Jo, Ian and me (Joe)) prepared to depart for the genteel climes of Anja and Steve's, Steve called to say their hosting was off due to an emergency. Given that they've hosted their way through several urgent plumbing situations recently, we were concerned that it must be something very serious; a small nuclear reactor meltdown, perhaps, or the discovery of a portal to Hell? Actually Anja had fallen on the stairs and hurt her arm - we hope you're on the mend Anja. 

The four of us abandoned the car and decamped to the Greenbank pub, and while awaiting the arrival of Pete, we played Llama Llama; from the designer of Panda Panda, played with the same deck make up, and just as agonising. I didn't record the scores. Martin won. 

Pete arrived in time to mention he'd played it when it was called Dog Poker. And Panda Panda was Cat Poker. We neatly segued into one of Jo's prototypes, Untrustwordy, which they pitched to us as poker but with words.  After the first round, I was lowest on the score track, having struggled to assimilate the relatively few rules of the game, and I suggested we play again, so I could regain some dignity. I did so badly in the second round (falling for Jo's bait that they were holding an X) that I dropped off the bottom of the scoreboard! Meanwhile Martin did so well he shot off the top. It's an interesting design, and Jo's planning to pitch it at the Games Expo this year, so fingers crossed we'll play it again in published form.

Though I'd brought Mü, we felt it might be a little late in th evening to be enjoying it's head-scratchy delights, and Martin had brought Reif für die Insel, which at least also has an umlaut. It translates, we think, to 'ripe for the island' which sounds like it might mean something slightly dubious to German ears, and involves an awful lot of bananas. Pete pointed out that this week, bananas were the crossover crop, as they appear in Santiago, which we played last week. As do potatoes, which feature in Maya, which we played the week before. The problem, we discovered, is that bananas are a bit of a crossover crop cul-de-sac, as they appear in loads of games but mostly on their own. 

I didn't take any pictures, but that's really no bad thing, as this game has about as much table presence as half a packet of banana flavour Chewits. It's an auction game, one of Reiner Knitzia's dodecorilogy (at the very least) of auction games. And it's quite neat, but fairly one note. Having played it a couple of times I can say I prefer something like High Society, which it reminds me of slightly. But it's fine. It's no Santiago!

Jo 89

Martin 75

Pete 67

Joe 63

Ian 59

After that we played Hot Streak - which has tons of table presence - but I still didn't take any pictures. Silly me. It was a fun game - in one race Dangler and Gobbler responded to the start whistle by turning around and running off the end of the board together. Very funny, and I pipped Jo to the win. Or do none of us win, we just enjoy a different life outcome. 

Joe 62

Jo 60

Pete 55

Ian 35

Martin 24

Before disappearing into the night, we gave it some So Clover. Of course we did. Martin saw my clue of toothed, and spotted tiger. "As in saber-toothed tiger!". I waited for him to spot Saber on another card, which he did eventually. What a gift. We scored 26, which is exactly the score I thought we got last week with three players, so clearly I was just thinking ahead.

With that we wandered into the night - it's fun to play in a pub every once in a while, and The Greenbank is very well-appointed in that regard; we were accompanied by lovely live music all evening too. Let's do it again some time! 

These late scores just in…

 I may have been only a few minutes late but even before I reached Joe's, I had a text informing me of the first result of the evening. 

Rainbow

Sam 32

Martin 32

Joe 38

Ian 44

I'm guessing, based solely on Martin's position on the list, that low scores are good. 

I arrived in time to derail a game of For Sale, and the seven of us split into two groups. 

Katy was gaslit into believing she'd enjoyed Bomb Busters the last time she'd played it. And so she, Joe, Sam and Martin set up to bust some bombs. 

Meanwhile, I joined Ian and Adam H in a game of Monkey Palace. It's a nice puzzle game in which you build an increasingly Escher-esque construct of arches and pillars all, apparently, just for one monkey. 

It's quite lovely and thinky with a bit of an engine building aspect in that the cards you pick up as a reward for simian architecture give slightly different supplies of building supplies for as long as they're visible on your player mat.

As we totted up the scores, we were surprised at how close it had been… until i asked about 3 bonus cards next to Adam's drink. 

Adam 36… no, wait, 48

Ian 42

Andrew 36

As for the busting of bombs, I played them scant attention until the mission failed. Joe guessed one of Sam's numbers and got it wrong. “Why did I think it was safe?” he asked himself. A terrible moment of self reflection for any bomb disposalist. 

And now Steve arrived. Monkey Palace was still in full swing, so they became a quintet. They played Reif für die Insel (Ripe for the Island).

This is all about bananas. Ripe, brown bananas in particular. They scored points, I think, while yellow and green ones got you nothing. The only other thing I know about this game is that two parrots are bad. This happened towards the end of the game and prompted all manner of anguish. 

In an echo of the scoring for Monkey Palace, this game also had a late addendum when Martin texted me saying he'd forgotten a rule and could I add 5 points to his tally. Didn’t change the standings in this case, though.

Martin 71 (not 66)

Katy 65

Steve 60

Sam 54

Joe 43

During this, we had finished Monkey Palace and started on Cities, a new worker placement city building game. Ian went big on water, I made a big park and put almost nothing in it while Adam pursued point scoring bonuses. Turns out that was the winning strategy. Go figure. 

Adam 78

Ian 65

Andrew 63

Before we finished Cities, the other half of the table played a quick game of Mlem. This has long been an achilles heel for Sam but he agrees. At first, his luck apparently remained stubbornly bad as he and Steve blew up.

But later he amazed everyone, maye even himself, by getting two cats into deep space. In fact, deep space became pretty full with each player reaching this final frontier.

Joe 42

Martin 35

Sa 32

Steve 31

Katy 30

Next, we all reshuffled. Martin, Joe, Katy and me played the game that Ludo always wanted to be: Agent Avenue. Sam, Ian, Steve and Adam set off on the epic journey that is Fellowship of the Ring. Sam read out the extensive flavour text to give a little context to the co-op trick taker. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow that game at all. I was too involved in an epic game (as epic as you can be in 20 minutes) of Agent Avenue. The gameplay is simple - one team plays two cards, one up and one down - but the knots we tied ourselves into trying to guess our opponents details was anything but. 

For most of the game, though, Joe and I were sitting pretty just a few steps behind our rivals. The game ended in dramatic style. We were one space behind Martin and Katy’s spy and we chose their face up card. When the face down card was revealed it actually sent their spy backwards to defeat. We were shocked that Katy had played a card that would inevitably have lead to a loss. But when she showed the rest of her hand they all would have done the same. It was a fait accompli. Typical espionage - you never find out until it’s too late.

Joe and Andrew - win

Martin and Katy - don’t

Then I pull on my coat and set out into the world. Someone else must have left too, since when I receive messages about the final games of the evening, there was glad news of a 36 out of 36 in So Clover.

Finally, Joe, Sam and Martin played Sunrise Lane with Martin winning and Joe in second.

Thanks for the evening everyone. See you next week.

Monkey Night

A relatively sparse GNN kicked off when Martin and Ian arrived at my house. While we waited for our fourth member to join us we played Rainbow, a card game that sort of flips Fishing on its head. The cards are numbered 1-6 and you're playing singles or sets to claim cards from the middle of the table as points - but the catch is that whatever you bid will become the points for the next round.

It's a clever game, but  not entirely devoid of luck - dealt a bunch of fives and sixes, I won the first play fairly easily. 

Sam 38
Martin 35
Ian 26

But it only takes ten minutes, so we went again. This time things everyone upped their game a little, which the scores reflect:

Martin 56
Sam 46
Ian 42

Laura had arrived at the finale, and so what was to become the unofficial Monkey Night kicked off: three games with simian flavour, although that's where the similarities ended. We began with one of Martin's: Ape Town, a Knizia tile-layer where we're a kind of monkey mafia, trying to get the most points from a combination of momentary opportunities and longer-term area control.

The track around the edge of the board shows what tiles are available to you: you can take the next one available, or pay money to hop past it to the next one, and so on. Monkeys and Bananas simply score via adjacency. Orangutans and Lemurs score when the neighbourhood they are in is complete: Orangutans for the monkeys in that neighbourhood, Lemurs for the monkeys in adjacent neighbourhoods - as long as they outnumber the Lemurs in it. 

I think we all began with the anticipation that perhaps Orangutans were where the juice was, as they effectively boss the neighbourhoods. But as play continued it transpired that the Lemurs could, at the right moments, haul in huge points. Ian and I sailed off ahead of Laura and Martin, and they didn't catch us. Martin's enforced investment in the empty areas didn't work out, as they filled up with worthless bananas. 

Sam 89
Ian 77
Laura 70
Martin 66

The presentation is a bit bananas too, but it was a fun game. Next up was Monkey Palace!

This is a Lego-based task of building aforementioned palace in order to generate monkey points and cash them in for cards, which represent both end-game points and Lego income for the future. Every turn you must build from the ground up, and the amount of monkey points depends on how many arches you build (1mp per arch) and whether the decoration you place on top is the highest of its' type (+1mp). It's simple mechanically, but quite challenging spatially, especially when the structure grows a size befitting of its name. 

An unusual beast. I snuck a narrow win here.

Sam 26

Martin 24

Ian 15

Laura 14

Though it was getting on a little, Laura felt she couldn't go home without completing the monkey triplet and so Martin explained the rules - thankfully simple - to Reif fur die Insel, yet another Knizia! This is a bidding game where you collect bananas over three rounds. Brown bananas score at the end of the current round, yellow only at the end of round two, and green only at the end of round three: the entire game is thematically a ripening process. 

Four bananas (bunches, to be precise) are drawn randomly from a bag, and then we bid on them with these cards, and keep going until everyone is bidding on a separate banana bunch. Then we put whatever we got onto our boards:

As you can see, space is limited (the round ends when the boards are full) so having too many green bananas early on restricts your involvement in subsequent rounds. But on the other hand, they do tend to be high-scoring. Inevitably, as this is Knizia, there are also rotten bananas and parrots that eat bananas, and someone has to take that shit. 

Your bid cards are gone for good - except for the zero, which always comes back to you. Any cards you still have after round three are worth points! Ian and I held onto our tens, but it was Martin who came away the victor, by a banana-peel margin.

Martin 75

Sam 74

Ian 67

Laura 61

At this point Laura left, uncoaxed by So Clover, but Ian still had beer to finish and Martin requested a whisky as we broke out the traditional closer. Despite the also-traditional mumblings of dismay, we turned in a perfect score. 

"Let's go again" I said, even though we all knew that the second play of So Clover always leads to catastrophe. I said we needed to break the curse, so we summoned what wherewithal we had left after an evening of simian shenanigans. It was another triumph, and the curse was broken.

All that remained was the downing of whiskies, the shucking of coats and grabbing of things. This was slightly held up by Charlie, who was so reluctant to get off Martin's bag that he travelled halfway across the kitchen floor. "He's not one for hints" I admitted. 

And that was that.