Snacks Entertainment

This week's games night missed Hallowe'en by a day, but landed smack on Martin's birthday. And, boy, did we celebrate. We were five in total: Martin the host, Sam, Ian, Chris and me. Sam came bearing a gift of a second hand Reiner Knizia game. Chris came bearing gifts of sweets, personally selected by him and put in individual fun party bags. Thus began our snack odyssey.

First up was a new game from Martin, fresh out the wrapper, making its second appearance on GNN: Circus Flohcati. This collection game is all about getting "trios" (three of a kind) or trying to pick up high cards in each of the ten suits. The game ends when one player has one card from each suit (a Gala Show) or the draw deck is used up.

Ian and I seemed to spend a lot of time going bust, while Chris had issues with the similarity of some of the colours. Sam managed to achieve a Gala Show just a few cards before the draw deck was exhausted, but the ten point bonus was not enough to make up for his lack of trios.

Martin 53
Chris 49
Sam 37
Ian 37
Andrew 33

An inaugural win for Martin. Happy birthday indeed. I'm not sure if anyone worked out a strategy, although there were prolonged thoughtful silences punctuated by the sound of happy chewing.

Next up was Druids, another trick taking game where your points are the value of the lowest card in the trick you won. If you later won a trick with the same suit, then that card would be replaced. You have one value per suit in front of you, but if anyone has a value for all five suits, then the round ends and they score minus three.

It all seemed a bit hippy-ish, with the rules talking about "domain cards" and "gaia cards". But the game itself had opportunities for a wide range of dickish behaviour and ways to attack your opponent.

We played just three rounds and Chris's win came courtesy of a round two windfall, when he won a trick that helped him score highly in four of the five suits. An optimal result.

Four suits. Don't want another!

Chris 35
Andrew 25
Martin 19
Sam 14
Ian 5

During this game we tore through some wasabi crisps and then straight onto the lime and chutney (I think) poppadom type things.

Next up was Decrypto. Sam and Martin teamed up again in an attempt at removing the hex that appears to hang over them whenever they play this game together.

Talking of hexes, there must have been one over the third word in our quartet, since it only appeared once for us in six rounds. This made the sixth round a real problem for me as I had to give clues to three words that had already been clued to death.

Sam pulled off a magnificent literary clue that went "The party was a hoot / I decided to strip off / Everybody stared at me with massive eyes." A great effort, but we intercepted the signal to give us a real advantage, since they'd miscommunicated earlier. The words he was trying to convey were Owl, Comic Book, and Frog.

Ian, Chris and Andrew – George Smiley from Smiley’s People
Martin and Sam - Guy Smiley from Sesame Street

We were sustained through this with some "two for a pound" salt and vinegar crisps. And we still had further to fall. Oh yes.

Finally, we played Skull King. This Contract Whist with knobs on is a tricky one to judge. There are plenty of special cards to render the normal suits redundant which makes guessing how many tricks you'll take a bit of a shot in the dark.

Notable events were: Martin bidding only one trick each round (until a last minute bid for glory) and, apart from once, always getting it; people bidding No Tricks despite having a pirate in their hand and, the main feature of the game, Ian's crazy roller coaster of luck which mostly involved him wiping out whatever he'd scored in one round by a terrible following round. It was a sight to see when, in round seven, he successfully bid Zero to put himself right back in contention only to fail with a Zero bid in rounds eight and nine to send him right back into negative figures. I guess this was karma since, by now, our snacking had moved on to Ian's two (two?!) packs of pork scratchings. Mind you, while we told each other how unhealthy they were, we kept munching away in a kind of The Rope's Around My Neck, I May As Well Kick Away The Chair kind of attitude.

Everyone is ready to bid while I struggle to take a photo

I played a fairly cautious game until I saw Ian gain 70 points for a zero bid. I had a safe round eight thanks to that pirate/escape card. In round nine, inspired by Ian I also went for zero (with a pirate in my hand, of course) and got it. This put me in pole position in the final round and when I got my four tricks with my Skull King card beating two pirates, I was untouchable.

Although, in the last round, Martin had a dilemma. He could have used the escape/pirate card to win or lose a trick. If he won, he'd screw himself and me. If he lost, he'd pretty much hand victory to me. When we totted up the scores we realised that Martin could have gifted Sam a win as he snuck up at the last minute thanks to him (and Chris) scoring zero tricks in the final round.

Andrew 360
Martin 270
Sam 250
Chris 190
Ian -90

A very enjoyable game, mostly thanks to Ian's wild swings of (mis)fortune.

By now it was ten to eleven. We'd played, drank and snacked as well as anyone could expect five aging gentlemen to do on a weekday, so we called it a night. Thanks to Martin for hosting and thanks to everyone for joining us.

Junk Junkies

After two weeks of trios, GNN swelled in size to a whole quintet of gamers. Initially, there was Joe, the host, Sam, returning from holidays, Ian, returning from illness and me, again. Later Andy M was expected to join us.

We began with one the games that Joe bought in Germany; Kimono. This is a Mammut-esque card game of dividing a group of objects (in this case, pieces of Japanese finery) in two and then players secretly choose which one they are interested in. If you're the only one who's interested in a group, then it's yours. Otherwise it stays on the table and is divided again. And so the process repeats.

On top of this, any group that can't be shared goes into the bin, as does any group chosen by no one. This is important, since one of the cards on offer each turn allows you to collect whatever is in the bin. This may, of course, be nothing. You score points for sets of things up to a certain number, but anything above that number and the collection will count against you.

The only photo I took of the game that was in focus.

It's quite a thinky game and I didn't really get to grips with it. I like to blame Joe's German beer, which he was drinking from a chilled glass. This left little puddles of water wherever he put it on the table and it seemed no matter how often we cleaned up, there was one more patch of water. Very distracting.

Ian had a great third round, picking up lots of stuff from the bin. Joe and Sam ended the last round with a selection of things that would score Sam negative points, no matter which he chose. He cleverly chose the same that Joe did, meaning he wouldn't have to pick anything up at all.

Ian 46
Sam 40
Joe 36
Andrew 18

During this game Andy arrived. We pondered something a bit meaty and substantial, but before we chose one we decided on a quick game of Illusion.

This game of area judgement made its debut last week and Sam and Ian were both intrigued. Its a bit longer with five, especially since we began with four incorrect challenges, all being made by different players. We were amazed at how good we were at working out the ares of things, even if we did all have to make a conscious (and sometimes verbal) effort to remind ourselves to change colours from round to round.

In the end, another incorrect challenge (this time by Joe) finally gave Andy that crucial third point.

Andy 3
Andrew 2
Sam 1
Ian 1
Joe 0

Next up was Skull King, a trick taking game in a similar vein to Voodoo Prince. In this card game each player has to bid on how many tricks they will take this round, not unlike Contract Whist. Except, that the deck contains certain Special Cards, pirates, mermaids and the Skull King himself, which are more powerful than the usual suited cards.

The other difference to Contract Whist is that bidding for and winning no tricks gets you the Round Number x 10 in points. As such, the longer the game goes on, the more powerful it becomes.

I set off into an early lead and maintained it, keeping a hundred point gap between me and my nearest rival until round eight.

My nearest rival being Andy who was, at one point, in a distant last with -30 but had since put together a run of form. His early confusion was gone and we'd quite forgotten how he'd asked to change his bid after everyone else had bid and we had to remind him that, technically, that would be cheating.

Instead now he set up a grandstand finish, with him on 190 and me on 210. I bid an exceedingly possible three tricks and, since he doubted he could get four, he went for no tricks at all.

It was tense. At least, it was for us two. The other three weren't in contention, although we should note Sam's last minute dash into third place at Ian's expense. In the battle for the top, both of us completed our bids, but mine got me 60 points and Andy bagged a cool ton.

Andy 290
Andrew 270
Sam 140
Ian 80
Joe -20

Next was a request from Andy, who was keen to try Junk Art. This "Bandu with benefits" is fun but I always feel it overstays its welcome. While I don't dislike it, I prefer Bandu's simplicity.

Joe, meanwhile, admired Junk Art's aesthetic qualities and it's hard to argue. From my brutalist architecture to Joe's forgotten shelf in a garden shed, the structures were nice to look at.

Brutal

Joe's shed in the distance

Since Joe's table has a bit of a wobble, there was a strict No Elbows On Table rule. Sam also observed "Bandu breathing" (breath out with you head turned up and away from the table) in times of high excitement. Andy's habit of sometimes slamming cards down on the table often caused some consternation but no actual collapses. Joe, despite losing the cooperative round, ended with most fans.

Joe about to topple the tower

Joe 16
Andy 14
Andrew 12
Ian 12
Sam 8

Time was ticking on but we had enough time for one more game: Face Cards. This recent arrival also raised some interest after the blog post for last week, and now it was time to see how it played with more players.

Well, it was a bit slower. With Ian and Andy both on their fourth beer, there was a bit of analysis paralysis. I (still sober, teetotal for the night) lacked imagination with my chihuahua/lynx pair (both animals) and geisha/bride (both women) but I did get chosen, more often than not. Others were more ingenious, with Karl Marx being successfully linked to some kind of owl. I didn't take too many notes, but the scores fell in quite a orderly manner.

Andrew 11
Ian 11
Joe 8
Andy 8
Sam 8

And with that we were done. I slipped out, apparently unnoticed, into the night and home to bed. Thanks for the entertainment, guys. Let's do it again next week.

Homer and Away

Forgive the epic post. I thought I'd keep tabs on the games we played in our week in Cornwall, but it turned out we played a lot of games. A lot.

Saturday

Mine and Sally's annual getaway with Katie and Mark fell just outside Penzance, specifically overlooking the train track that we became obsessed with during the week. As a present, Mark and Katie had the Trainspotting Log Book delivered on the Sunday and we began recording our debut week as 'foamers'. As we weren't sure about some of the terminology, Length was often recorded as 'Long' and Place Seen might be 'Balcony' or "next to the kettle'.

Excitement peaked early when Sally coaxed not only a wave from the driver, but a horn as well. He went in the book as 'Ledge'.

Games-wise though we began with JamSumo on the Saturday we arrived (Peppa won Sumo, Mark won Jam) followed by, post bed-time, a great game of Decrypto which Sally I won partly due to our obtuse clueing and partly down to sheer luck, when we speculated wildly on an interception and pulled it off - twice.

We followed that with Push It, which Mark and Sally won with a series of deft flicks, mostly notable for Sally's sideways karate-chop technique that started off chaotically, but improved. All of us suffered at the hands of the undulating tablecloth. But Katie definitely provided all the high spots of with her high-velocity attacks, that usually sent some element on the table careering into my midriff.

Mark and Sally 21
Katie and Sam 8

A great arrival evening, surely to be followed up by a day of rain and heavy euros.

*

Sunday

Sadly I rose (at six) on Sunday to find a gorgeous day in the offing, so the most gaming I could engineer in the morning was a game of Ganz Schon Clever against Peppa. It's a more-ish and fast-moving play with two, and Peppa gave it 7.75 out of ten, as opposed to El Dorado which she played with us recently and gave a 9.

Then we went to the beach and some stuff happened there.

After lunch, Mark, Sally, Peppa and I sat down for a game of Azul and everyone loved it (Peppa: 8.5) I made some early hay off the back of Mark (to my left) not doing anything mean to me, but as they all became more cognizant of what was happening in the game, these breezy, benign moves dried up and my possible all-blues or all-yellows or even possibly-both-down evaporated into neither. Mark's quiet contemplation proved to be the key.

Mark 75
Peppa 66
Sam 59
Sally 41

After watching Jumanji (the new version) there was another beach sortie, before Peppa and I played the debut game of Skull King. I recall Joe and Martin were familiar with it - or its mechanics - but it was new to me. A trick-taker where there are three basic suits, a trump suit, but then some pirate cards that trump everything; with an additional catch in that the strongest pirate (the Skull King himself) can be trumped by the 'weaker' mermaid.

The scoring is what makes Skull King interesting though - like contract whist you bid tricks, but you only score if you meet your bidded trick target, and if you're out you gather ten minus points for every trick you're over or under. Bidding no tricks at all gets you the round number multiplied by ten.

It was neck and neck until round ten, where Peppa's slender lead fell foul of my five-trick targeted haul!

Sam 240
Peppa 140

After tea Lula and the boys retired to bed, and it was Mark & Peppa v Sally & Katie. As with the night before, it was another one-sided battle, only this time Katie was on the winning side.

Sally and Katie 11
Mark and Peppa 3

Then the main event of the evening was The Quest for El Dorado. Mark and I had played this with Peppa recently and they were quite taken with it, so we embarked on another dash for the mythical city with nothing but forschers and was auch immer zur Holle to get us there.

It was a mixed success. Katie was rather tired and not quite in the puzzly mode to figure out the best routes. Sally didn't mind the puzzling but her northern belt-tightening ways meant she didn't like buying cards and then keeping the money. "It feels weird" she said. Weird or not, she still found a way to surge past the pioneer Mark and claim a victory in most Ian-like fashion.

Sally - makes it to El Dorado
Mark - watches Sally from a nearby lake, unable to find a paddle
Sam - trapped behind a mountain
Katie - has a nice view of Sam

We stepped out onto the balcony where the much-talked-about game of Mooning the Trains finally began, as Mark rolled back the years - and his trousers - to give the late-night commuters an unexpected view. He insisted afterwards he had only done it to impress Katie, although these motivations were revisited the next day when he realised it was his first mooning. I guess as we move through life, different things give us pause for reflection.

Mark 1
Everyone else 0

We ended the evening with a couple of games of The Mind. Or to be accurate, three games, after the first level of our first game was so disastrous we reset and started again. Both had their high spots with, at one point, a 7-8-9-10-11 going down rapid fire from all angles. But neither saw us past level 5, as shurrikins couldn't save our bacon.

Monday

Daytime Monday was a trip to St Ives. I am never going to St Ives again.

On our return I reacquainted myself with the rules of Lords of Vegas by playing through a few rounds, but I couldn't quite generate enough momentum to get four players to the table. Instead Peppa and I blasted through another ten rounds of Skull King. Peppa's initial few rounds were successful bids of zero, whilst I picked up minus points. But such is the swingy nature of Skull King that a couple of big wins put me back into contention - and as with the day before, it came down to a decider in round ten:

Sam 70
Peppa 20

In a later rematch, another round ten showdown went the other way rather more spectacularly:

Peppa 90
Sam -10

Before the children migrated to bed, and Mark and I cajoled Katie into another game of The Quest for El Dorado as Sally made tiffins. Katie was hesitant, but susceptible to coaxing, and so we set off once more, in German, for the land of gold - or to use the German, gold.

Just as before, Mark hurtled into an early lead whilst Katie and I dawdled. But just as before, he was to be overhauled in the final reckoning - despite pulling off a spectacular final move to get himself to El Dorado, Katie followed him through the gates and the cheering masses turned their attentions to her, seeing as she had the most chevron-shaped tie-breakers. Meanwhile, I was cursing my Forschers for turning up at the wrong time. It's a bit like Lignum, this game.

Katie - El Dorado!
Mark - El Dorado!
Sam - El Perazoso

With that humiliation out of the way, we moved on to the next one - Decrypto!

It was Sally and I versus Katie and Mark. Our words were DUST, EVENING, GLASS and COMPUTER. But we had a miscommunication immediately when I guessed Sally's clue of Buffy related to the evening, not dust. While Mark bamboozled us with clues comprised of words we'd never even heard of (doubotrons, opinel) Sally and I were helped that for four rounds straight we didn't have to clue 'evening' at all, as all our code cards were variations on numbers 1, 3 and 4.

They were getting closer, twice getting two out of three clues right. But when the end came, it came through another miscommunication - my clue of No relating to the Little Britain computer sketch that Sally wasn't aware of. She guessed Dust, reasoning that No would be her answer if I asked her to dust.

Mark and Katie win
Sally and Sam go to bed.

Tuesday

Skull King!

Peppa 200
Sam 140
Stanley 10

I worked in the morning whilst the others headed to the beach to christen Stan's wakeboard.

Later in the day I - appallingly - couldn't find anyone to play a game, and ended up tackling Ganz Schon Clever by myself. I didn't do great, scoring 152 points and then a very shabby 120-something. Then I realised I was selling myself short by not picking up dice from Dirk, as you're meant to with the solo game. I played again, but it didn't improve my score much.

Sam 158

Better than Dirk's zero, I suppose. I also headed into Penzance to check out the local games shop, but sadly Google was not quite as up to date as we'd like. And gaming-wise, neither was Penzance.

Skull King got played again after Joe and Lula went to bed, and this time Stan eked out a win with a low-bid strategy that, once more, was a last-round decider:

Stan 240
Sam 230
Mark 50
Peppa -30

Then after the older children also retired, I tried to convince the grown-ups to play Lords of Vegas by sheer force of will. Or at least simply repeating the words over and over. But we played Push It instead. With the tablecloth removed it was a more pleasing surface, and the game's narrative was dramatic as Katie and I surged into the lead, were overhauled, then surged back, to leave both sides poised for a win on 20 points...

Sally and Mark 22
Katie and Sam 20

I got the yips.

Then Decrypto returned to the table, this time with the teams split by gender. How Mark and I survived as long as we did I don't know, as the ladies seemed to have identified half of our words by round two. And we swung perilously close to miscommunications more than once - luckily I guessed that Mark's canopic related to Pyramid, and not to Oasis. But with Katie and Sally seemingly onto us, we had to go more and more obtuse, until my clue of Benson (for Butler) flummoxed Mark and we picked up our second miscommunication.

Katie and Sally - win!

And we finished with The Mind. After our crash-and-burns of the previous evening, this was a triumph, with Level 12 achieved with three lives and three shurrikins. I advised everyone to play the Dark Mind at the same speed they would the Light Mind, but didn't follow my own advice, and we crashed out on round three.

Mark then mooned another train.

Mark 2
Everyone else 0

Wednesday

Whilst the kids started the day watching Harry Potter and the Saucer of Something or Other, my solo ascents of Ganz Schon Clever finally reached something more respectable.

Sam 273

According to the solo game rules, that makes me equivalent with Einstein. Probably in his post office clerk phase, I guess. Post-breakfast, I had to go on a mission of mercy (dishwasher salt; lemons) whilst Stanley and Peppa played a head to head of the current game of the moment, Skull King.

Stanley 150
Peppa 100

Before Lula instigated a few games of Insider. In the first two, the insider (Joe and Sally respectively) got away with it, as we collectively accused Sally (when it was Joe) and Lula (when it was Sally). In the third game the insider was Peppa, but she was undermined somewhat by the word being 'trashbox' which we were all so unfamiliar with it sounded strange when she guessed it!

Then it was back to the beach. While Stanley and Peppa zoomed up and down in the water...

Mark and I made a face.

Then, post-lunch, after another few games of Skull King, I finally managed to get a quorate for Lords of Vegas!

Stan was still preferring to roll around on the floor like a puppy wearing a hat, so it was myself, Peppa and Mark. And things began rather badly for me when Mark took control of my first casino in short order, getting himself a two-tile gold casino on the strip. My attempt to reorganise blew up in my face like claiming a 1gold card in Biblios (although I didn't make that reference at the time) before Peppa surged into an early lead.

Like the guy in the VW advert, I put all my money on silver, whilst Mark did something similar with purple. Both of us gnashed our teeth as lots of non-silver and non-purple cards flipped over, and Peppa was first to turn the corner on the scoretrack.

Then purples began to surface, and Mark overhauled her, and as we entered endgame Peppa ran out of dice and seemed happy to simply amass tonnes and tonnes of cash.

It was looking like a two-horse race for a bit as I brought up the rear, but I was saved by fate when two Strip cards popped out in a row, benefiting all of us - but me in particular on the Game End card, as I'd just sprawled to create another four-tile casino, pushing me into the slenderest victory.

After another trip to the beach (we made a dragon)

...a dog wanted to use Stan's wakeboard...

...we came back to yet more Skull King, with Lula now another convert. Not sure how many games the kids played, or who won them all. It went on for a couple of hours!

Then there was a quick game of Doodle Rush which Stan and I shared a win on, and after Lula's bedtime Stanley, Joe, Peppa and I played Now Boarding.

This is a Tim Fowers game, he of Paperback, Fugitive, and Burgle Bros. It's got the same UPA illustrative style and like Burgle Bros, it's co-operative. Unlike Burgle Bros though, there's a time element: players are working together to carry passengers around the USA in their planes, and although you can plan as much as you like, when each round starts there's a mere 30 seconds to do all the doing, and you need to quickly factor in the new passengers who've rocked up and messed up your plans.

At the end of each round, any passengers still in the airports get an anger cube - four anger cubes and they flounce out of the game. Three flounce-outs, and the players lose. Get through all the passengers with two or less - you win!

It looks great. It plays absolutely nuts, and I found it quite stressful, even having played it a couple of times at home with the boys. 

We lost!

The grown-ups evening was relatively short, as we were all exhausted by now. but we still squeezed a couple of games in: in El Dorado my dumping cards strategy (thanks Adam) saw me claim a convincing win as the others cursed their cards.

Then on The Mind we were so out of sync that Sally realised she was listening to the radio, and I thought I was holding a card from a previous round.

And so to Bed.

Thursday

The distractions of the outside world meant the first game didn't game played until the shockingly late time of 7.30, when we played Destination X. Joe was the spy, and hid out in Uganda.

Then Peppa was the spy, and we found her in Singapore.

Joe and I went off to do stories whilst the hectic sounds of JamSumo came echoing through the floor above us. Not sure what happened, but Sally said later she'd done enough JamSumo to last her a good while. After that they introduced Sally to Skull King, but it was a baptism of fire:

Peppa 240

Stan  190

Sally 10

The evening was also games-light, with only two of them hitting the table. Azul was first. Katie's understandable reticence at learning yet more new rules was overcome by Mark and Sally insisting that she would like it, and my setting it up while they did so.

And she did like it! 

Although Sally's triple-column board aligned with all the blues meant she took a pretty convincing win. The rest of us duked it out for second.

Sally 86
Mark 74
Sam 73
Katy 67

We ended a reasonably early evening with Push It, the Gods of seating once more pitching Katie and I versus Sally and Mark. Katie's elegant 'Queen's Butler' pushing style was hitting the high spots, but my mojo wasn't on and it was another victory for Sally and Mark.

Friday

Our last day was another games-light spell as we headed to the Minack theatre for a kids show, and followed that with the beach.

In fact, bar a final outing for Skull King (I saw off Stan and Peppa) we almost didn't play games at all, until a bizarro-world style changing of identities occurred, as I speculated that I was gamed out, only to be cajoled into it by Katie. Whatever next!

With the aid of Mark's margarita and a succession of fatty snacks (and only mildly dispirited by a hiccup attack) we ended the holiday with a final blast of Azul!

Re-energised by margaritas and a reckless sense of hedonism - or as close as I get to it - I suddenly found my inner tiler, channeling Andrew's clustering to push me into the lead, and triggering enough bonuses to hold it to the drunken end:

Sam 90-something
Katie and Sally - in the 80s
Mark - in the 70s, thanks most likely to picking up no less than eight red tiles!

And with that, we were done. A gaming marathon! And a fun week.