How very a-neue-ing

This evening almost ended before it began for me, as I got into my car and found that the interior rear mirror had fallen off. Quickly I strapped it back in place with some masking tape, just enough to get me to and from Martin’s place for this week’s gaming goodness.

At first there were six of us: Martin, myself, Ben, Katy, Ian and Andy. While we waited for Sam and Chris to arrive, we decided to have a game of Why First? This game rewards coming in second and, as such, we did wonder if it was too unthematic to play it first. But that didn’t stop us.

Andy shot off into an early lead, and then tried very hard to make someone else do better than him. In fact, both Katy and Ben scored more than him, but Ben was just too good at being second and so he lost. We ended with Martin muttering something about stupid random games.

Katy 9
Andy 8
Ben 11
Martin 5
Ian 0
Andrew 0

By now, everyone had arrived and we split into two. Martin, Katy, Ben and Ian quickly decided they would like to try Discworld again. The remaining four debated our options and I mentioned Tigris & Euphrates. This got a certain amount of guarded interest but perhaps it was Martin’s anger at us playing his favourite game without him that helped us decide.

And so it was, four players sat down to a game that they barely remembered. Martin kindly stopped setting up Discworld long enough to explain the rules to us. Once we were going, it was a slow thoughtful process. We vied for territory and struggled to remember the difference between an internal and an external battle.

I played quite badly, never getting anywhere near a temple, and I sealed my defeat near the end of the game by taking on Chris in a hopelessly misjudged battle. He won easily and picked up a load of points in the meantime. Sam was first to get a temple down, which meant he ended the game with 17 points in one particular colour. But it’s your weakest colour that is scored, and in the final tally Chris had the best all round game.

Chris 10
Sam 7
Andrew 6
Andy 5

And with that done, Andy was satisfied that at least he now knew for sure that he didn’t like T&E and he could trade it away.

As it happened, Discworld ended at the same time:

Ian 96
Katy 81
Martin 73
Ben 44

With Martin especially keen that I should note “piss poor” next to Ben’s score.

At this point, the teams shuffled. Sam, Martin, Andy and Ian went for Neue Heimat, an abstract-looking game with coloured blocks and hemispheres. Ben, Katy, Chris and I went for Safranito: the fun game of spice mixing.

There was a distinct lack of garlic throughout the game, which made things difficult to finish those garlicky recipes. Chris went for the secret recipe option twice, but seemingly had little luck. I was the first to complete three recipes, thus winning the game. The final places were decided by a money tie-breaker.

Andrew 3 recipes
Chris 1 recipe and $220
Katy 1 and $160
Ben 1 and $70

And also at this time, Neue Heimat ended. Martin worked out the scores and they sounded more like something you’d get at the end of an episode of QI.

Martin 9
Ian 0
Andy –17
Sam –79

I’ll leave it up to them to explain what went wrong or, indeed, if this is a normal spread of scores.

And with that, the evening was done. At the last minute, Katy said we’d forgotten to play a game in Joe’s honour (since it was his birthday, hence his absence). So, as a last minute substitute, we put Martin’s table back the way it was in honour of Joe. Hope he appreciates the gesture.

And this is the Division

King Bib

Thursday! It's now so well established we almost don't bother emailing to confirm any more. Except we do just in case, like last week, Thursday is on a Sunday. Luckily this week no such chicanery was at play, and Andrew, Ian, little Joe, Stanley and I sat down to play Safranito at 6.30pm. This was Joe's choice and he and I played as a team. Joe began as designated thrower but halfway through changed to designated fidget as he played with the box and the cards and I took over. Neither of us was really producing the goods, though, and like Stanley, we struggled. On the other side of the table Ian and Andrew had their gaming caps on and soon put and end to proceedings:

Ian 3 recipes
Andrew 3 recipes (2nd on turn order)
Joe and Sam 2 recipes
Stanley 1 recipe

The boys retired to bed with You Choose and half a chapter of The Hobbit. I came down to discover Ian had beaten Andrew so comprehensively at Biblios that the moniker Mr Biblios didn't really do it justice. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Ian (King Biblios) 18
Andrew 0

I'll leave them to explain this alchemy in the comments.

Andrew here. I won't use the comments, since photographic evidence is needed for this event.

History, they say, is written by the winners. Not this time, though. This game of Biblios will live long in the memory as the perfect gaming example of a fly being hit by a high speed train.

I started off okay but after a bunch of church cards, I panicked and changed tactics. Far too late, since we were halfway through the gift stage. This was followed by an appalling auction stage, where we were both low on money, except Ian didn't need it and the colours I wanted never came up.

I ended with a terrible hand. No card higher than a one.

Ian, meanwhile, swept the board. When one is beaten so badly, one can at least take solace in the old saying "where everything is bad, it must be good to know the worst."

We decided to play Macao, the weird cross between a standard euro and slightly convoluted roulette. Andrew started very confidently, clearing his tableau of cards whilst Ian and I picked up penalty chits for having too many. But Ian and I had a stronger second half of the game; Ian at one point delivering three tea tiles for 23 points to surge into the lead.

cubist panting

However my presence in the city quarters - and bonuses for them - saw me claim the lead:

Sam 75
Ian 72
Andrew 64

I remain very fond of Macao, even if the last couple of rounds are fairly head-scratchy. In fact we all enjoyed it.

It was only half-nine so, having failed to tempt Sally into a 4-player Codenames, we played Raj. Andrew suggested a variant where Dirk got involved - a fourth deck was randomly shuffled and a card turned over at the bidding stage. This came through for me at one stage when Dirk and Ian drew and my paltry 2 bid picked up a 9 tile...

But overall, Dirk didn't impress the way he's done recently at 7 Wonders. Maybe he needs more practice:

Sam 81
Andrew 39
Ian 18
Dirk 1

Andrew was threatening to leave but we cajoled him into a couple of rounds of Take It Easy - I called chocolate bars and Ian went full-nerd with Deep Space Nine characters. Andrew is probably glad he stayed, and his theory of losing at Take It Easy because of "always being shitfaced" was blown out of the water:

Shitfaced Andrew 297
Fairly drunk Sam 266
Inebriated Ian 214

It was not yet 10.30 but we called it a night, reminiscing already about Ian's masterful Biblios performance.

Andrew again. Just a quick mention of the weird rainbow over Bristol this evening as I walked to Sam's. I swear I will never play Biblios when there's a rainbow ever again.

Whisky Remorse

The weekend started badly, with Stanley taking a tumble at school and a Friday night trip to A+E diagnosing him with a 'buckled' bone - the bone compacts on impact and bulges out to one side. Forced to wear a cast for 6-8 weeks, Stan does at least live in a house that's coming down with boardgames. So after some weekend Safranito, Pairs, and Codenames, on Sunday night Andrew and Ian rolled up for our belated 'Thursday' session, and the boys joined us for a game of Love Letter. Joe and I made a team, whilst the others played solo.

The patient

Stanley got off to a good start, winning the opening round. I recalled our Love Letter session over the holidays, where Stanley correctly identified we had the Countess after Joe said to me "I can see her boobies". No such mistakes from Joe this time, who successfully eliminated Andrew's King. Ian, the expectant winner going by previous form, accrued two cubes and in a game of first-to-three things looked ominous. But Stanley knocked him out in the final round and Joe and I were lucky enough to have the Princess:

Sam and Joe - 3 cubes
Stanley - 2 cubes
Ian - 2 cubes
Andrew - 0 cubes

I took the boys up to bed, whilst Ian and Andrew debated which two-player game to bash out. When I returned 20 minutes later, they were deep in a gripping game of 7 Wonders with Dirk, who appeared to be outscoring at least Ian, possibly both of them. Ian's lack of resources hadn't worked out for him, whereas Andrew had plenty to choose from. It was tight, and Dirk *almost* took his first outright victory. As it was, he shared the honor with Andrew:

Dirk - 38
Andrew - 38
Ian - 30

It was time for Safranito! For those not yet in the know, this game is like a cross between Istanbul and bowls. Rather than a race for rubies, the first to complete three recipes wins. On your turn you throw coins onto the board, hoping to A. grab the spices you need by landing your coin above the correct bowl and B. knock other people's coins into shitty non-productive areas.

I started badly, at one point with a solitary spice in front of me compared to Ian's 3 and Andrew's 4. So I was pleased as punch to engineer myself into a winning position half an hour later - with a secret recipe in front of me, all I needed was a bit of cinnamon. There was loads out there, and I didn't even need to worry about turn order. But my three successive throws were all diabolical, meaning I missed out on my lovely cinnamon - and the win, as Andrew completed his secret recipe as well!

Andrew - wins
Ian - 2nd (two recipes)
Sam - 3rd (two recipes)

What now? We nearly played Africana but I think the shelf being so high put us off. Instead we played Bruges, Stefan Feld's possibly most point-salad-y game after Bora Bora. Build houses, put characters in them, build canals, improve reputation, fend off disasters... I nabbed majorities in reputation and canal (points!) early on, whilst Andrew grabbed majority in characters (points). Andrew's tactic seemed to be build as many characters as possible (points!), and in this way he stopped Ian and I ever flipping our character majority markers. Ian built some canals and got a statue (points!). Andrew built some more characters, including one who gave him money every time Ian or I built a character (money!)

Where's the balsamic?

To me it seemed Andrew was going to walk away with it - but come the count-up my two majorities (the others only had one apiece) and maximum reputation clinched me an unexpected win:

Sam 57
Andrew 55
Ian 50

By now it was fairly late, and we'd started drinking whisky. Possibly this contributed to our insatiable appetite for Pairs, as well as our inability to find anything to record the scores on. They started on my hand, but I ran out of room, and said I couldn't write on my right hand because I'm right-handed. So Ian found a Tesco receipt in his pocket and Andrew recorded the scores on that. I kept going bust on 7's. I think we all twisted at times when sticking might have been more sensible. Andrew's view on the game with three players changed from "It's not the same without Martin hassling me" to "This is brilliant. Why don't we play Pairs with three more often?". His head may tell him why this morning.

Beyond the general chaos and plaintive crying it's all a bit muddy now - but Ian won two games whereas Andrew and I picked up a solitary one. And with that, the weekend came to an end. Unless Stanley demanding Codenames at 7.10 this morning counts?

E-lemon-ated!

As you can probably guess by the great pun in the title, we played Pairs today, but that was at the end of a long and varied evening of games.

We were seven in number: Joe (the host), Sam, Martin, Ian, Matt, Andy and me. We began with a new game: Codenames. In this cross between Dixit and the TV show Only Connect, there are 25 words in a 5x5 grid. Two teams are made, and each one has a spymaster. These spymasters know which of the words belong to their team, which belong to the other team and which are neutral. Importantly, they know which one is the assassin: if the team chooses this one, it’s game over and you’re a big loser. The spymaster has to give a one word clue followed by a number that refers to how many words the clue refers to.

We started with me and Martin as spymasters. Martin was giving clues to Matt and Joe, while I had Andy, Ian and Sam on my team. Annoyingly, Martin was able to use, as his first move, the example clue that Sam had devised while discussing the rules.

For my first go, and just to give you an idea of the kind of clues involved, I said “Flies, two” and my team successfully deciphered Eagle and Time. Other guesses were not so successful, and Martin’s team were left with just one word: Smuggler. Martin said “Tobacco, one” but then cursed out loud when he saw that one of my words was “Pipe”.

That’s the crux of the game: to give clues that only refer to your words. As it turned out in this case, Martin’s cursing alerted his team to the danger of going for the obvious choice (Pipe) and go for the less obvious one instead.

Martin, Joe, Matt 8
Andrew, Andy, Ian, Sam 6

We played again with different teams, and Martin brought this to a swift conclusion by finding the assassin, Joe’s clue had been “Massachusets, three” and we found America and State easily enough, but we missed England (as in New England). Instead Martin got it into his head that ketchup was the answer, because it’s so American. Alas, it was the assassin, and the game ended early.

Sam, Ian, Andy, Matt 2
Joe, Martin, Andrew 0

We played one more game with the same teams as the second game. This time it lasted the distance, with Joe offering a very neat clue “Pert, two” lead Martin and I to Part and Port. Sam gave a clue “hit” which could’ve matched with Sock, Crash, and Tap but instead his team went for Film, as in a very successful film. Alas, that word belonged to the other team.

Joe, Martin, Andrew 7
Sam, Matt, Ian, Andy 6

A great game, and I could’ve payed all night, albeit the amount of downtime between goes was pretty long.

Next we split into two groups. Joe, Sam and Ian played Safronito while Martin, Andy, Matt and myself went for Kingdom Builder, dropping 10 Days In Africa on the floor while plucking KB down from a high shelf in Joe's games vestibule. Sorry Joe.

I’ve no idea how Safronito went, but I messed up on Kingdom Builder, allowing everyone else to get bonus tiles, while I struggled with just one.

I thought Matt was doing pretty well especially after he stole a bunch of mountains from Martin, but it was Martin and Andy who ran away with it.

Martin 73
Andy 70
Matt 55
Andrew 33

Safronito had ended a few minutes before us and it looked like they were entertaining themselves with a little improvised game of their own. Safronito ended:

1. Sam
2. Ian
3. Joe

By now we were all seven again. We considered Take It Easy and 6nimmt, but instead went for the rarer choice of Incan Gold. The first temple was a real rollercoaster ride, with every kind of danger rearing its ugly head. It was enough to have us all scurrying for the exit. All except Andy who stared down fate and was rewarded with a healthy amount of treasure before he, too, left.

We slowly chipped away at his lead, but it seemed that we'd run out of time when the final temple fell on our heads almost as soon as we walked in. But Matt's dark-horsedness resurfaced and he took the win by the finest of margins.

Matt 22
Andy 21
Andrew 18
Sam 16
Joe 11
Ian 11
Martin 3

Finally we ended the evening with Pairs. And who can resist this luck-based battle of wits? Not us. Not even Sam, who reckoned he must've played it a hundred times recently. In the end it was a cake walk for Ian, who reached 19 points after only three rounds, and simply stuck in the fourth round to pick up enough points to get him past 21.

I came up with the hilarious word “Elemonated!” to describe Matt going bust on a lemon. Alas, it was my turn next and I just knew that, like Dr Frankenstein, I had created a monster destined to defeat me. And so it was, I was elemonated too.

Ian 23
Sam 17
Andrew 15
Joe 12
Martin 10
Andy 7
Matt 0

And so, to the Division! Martin still leads albeit by a smaller margin, and Sam has stolen back points ratio from Adam. With only three weeks to go, anything can happen!

The Unbustable Engine

The odd thing about bank holiday weekends is that just as the quiet weekend finishes, you’re thrown straight into the scorching underbelly of competitive turmoil. Or "Martin’s house" as some people call it.

This week, there were seven of us: myself, Sam, Joe, Martin, Katy, Ian and Andy. We began in two groups, both playing games which involve spice trading. Ian, Andy and I played the very-very-imaginatively titled Spice Merchant, a simple card game where you can either put goods into a market or put goods in front of you. If the goods in the market match those in front of you then you win points! Hurrah! It sounds simple, but there’s the risk that another player may be trying to close the market quickly and ruin your plans. Plus, there’s the little matter of your secret trading choice. Perhaps this will save your day? Or perhaps not.

It was okay. I think it needs a couple of plays before the balance of when to do what becomes clear. For me, anyway.

Andy 27
Ian 25
Andrew 22

Joe, Martin, Katy and Sam where having a jolly old time with Safranito, a game that involves throwing chips across a board where they might end over a picture of a plate of spices. I didn’t understand much more than that.

1. Sam
2. Martin
3. Katy
4. Joe

But Spice Merchants is a much shorter game than Safranito so the three of us tried another new game: Villa Paletti. This is a dexterity game of tower building, with a winner at the end.

It was fun, but I was amazed how many rules they packed into such a simple game. I think it’s ripe for house variants. Anyway, we completed the tower, with Ian winner due to having more point-scoring columns on the top floor.

Ian 4
Andy 3
Andrew 1

Then we played Raj, while they finished off Safranito. It was the usual tale of cruel ties and tense bluffing, which Ian did best at.

Ian 73
Andrew 56
Andy 43

While we played Raj, the other four squeezed in two games of Villa Paletti. Both were shorter because the tower collapsed both times.

1. Katy
2. Martin
2. Joe
3. Sam

1. Sam
1. Martin
1. Katy
2. Joe

At this point we were all together again, so we divided into new groups. Joe, Andy and Katy played Was Sticht? and Sam, Martin, Ian and I tried yet another new game K2.

K2 is a mountaineering game where you can either move, acclimatize or build a tent as you try to scale the second highest mountain in the world. Weather is a major feature and most of the game was concerned with getting our mountaineers out of the areas where the cold hit hardest, like someone ducking into a coffee shop out of a sudden downpour.

It was simple but fun, perhaps helped by our choice of summer and good weather, which helped us keep all our meeples alive.

For the second time this evening, Ian proved himself a friend of high places. After winning Villa Paletti, he scaled K2 and scored a deserved win.

Ian 16
Martin 14
Sam 13
Andrew 12

Was Sticht? ended :

Andy 5
Katy 4
Joe 2

And once again we seven were free at the same time. Two rousing games of Pairs were played to finish the evening. This evening’s deadly foodstuff was blueberries. A pair of these proved fatal no less than four times (Ian, Sam and Joe twice).

Andy went through both games with only one bust hand, raising cries of “He’s unbustable!” He sailed to an easy win in game one

Andy 23
Katy 18
Andrew 16
Sam 16
Joe 10
Martin 9
Ian 0

But victory was taken from him by Martin. In the last round, if Martin had stuck, Andy would have won since Martin was beating Katy. But Martin was rather taken by our newly invented rule that getting a hand with each fruit or vegetable in it would automatically win the game. Since that was his only chance, he went for it. He didn’t get very far.

Katy 24
Andy 23
Ian 19
Sam 18
Joe 17
Martin 8
Andrew 4

What larks! And if that weren’t enough, Joe gave a quick demonstration of his own home-made dice tower for those who weren’t early enough to see it before.

What a shame such dedication and creativity isn’t rewarded on the Division.