Working 8 to 3

At one stage it looked like there were going to be eight of us last night, but we lost Andrew and Adam T to illness and Katy to a massage. "Don't get a massage on games night!" Martin lamented, as another gamer failed to materialise. But by the time we heard the latest breaking fallen-member news, we were already knee-deep in fun. Martin had been first to arrive, with a big enough window to beat me at Panda Panda: taking the first round on his second turn. We were mid-second-round when Ian and longtime absentee Andy Bate arrived: I suggested we abandon it, but Martin thought we could finish the round, and promptly won. 

We weren't sure how long before Adam H arrived, so bashed out a quick Wanted Wombats. Martin won with $20k - Andy and myself didn't have a dime at this point. 

Then Adam H arrived! At this point we were still assuming Katy was coming so chose a shortish game in Skull Queen, the risk-taking pirate trick-taker, which Andy realised after it was set up that he had at home. A quick refresher and we were away, with Martin leading the early running with his knack of capitalising on the double-move cards, no matter who played them. "You dirty bastard" I told him, and Andy sagely reflected that some things never change. 

It was a tightly-fought contest, with everyone close enough behind Martin after round two to give him pause. And indeed, I drew level with him in the third and final round to tie on 68 points. However to my right Ian's pirates all finished at the tip of his board, hauling him in a whopping 32 and with it, the pirate crown:

Ian 79
Martin and Sam 68 each
Adam 63
Andy B 50

By this time, we'd heard that Katy's escapades had put her into a soporific state and she understandably didn't want to walk a mile to trade insults with a bunch of middle-aged farts. So Andy introduced us to the only game he'd brought with him, in an impressive show of restraint: 6 Nimmt! Baron Oxx. 

As with 6 Nimmt, you're trying not to take cards because they are points and points are bad. As with 6 Nimmt, we choose a card to reveal simultaneously and place them in ascending order. But after that, things are very different. 

The cards all have big ox heads on them of varying colours, and when you place your card you now ignore the numbers at the top entirely and can place your card in any row where the last-placed card has an ox head that matches one on your card. If your ox heads are all blue, you need a blue ox head. If you've different colours, you may have a choice. 

If your ox head doesn't match any colour, it's like placing a lower-than-visible number in the ancestral game: you take a row of your choice. If you're forced to place the six card, you also take that row. But there's another danger too: the sixth ox head of a matching colour also pressgangs the row into your unwanted points haul. There's four rounds of four cards each, lots of disaster-impelled chagrin, and after that you discover that Adam only took a single card the entire game. 

Adam 2
Ian 32
Andy 33
Sam 34
Martn 60

Some things really do never change, do they? 

Andy had time for one more short game so we all piled into the front room and argued over what it should be, with Adam Martin and I debating the merits of Tsuro before I suggested we ask Andy if he liked it. "It's okay" he said diplomatically. We played No Thanks. 

It was kind of nuts, with Ian running out of money and forced to take the 27 just before Adam - who had the 26 and 28 - picked it up. Despite this, Ian put together a crazy run of something like ten cards and I harpooned my chance of second place by sending the 34 around when Andy was out of cash, leaving me with the 33 and 35, and this paragraph being maybe one of the nerdiest ever to grace the pages of GNN. But even if I'd kept it, I still wouldn't have caught Ian. We debated whether it might be seen as a co-op victory, as we'd expended more than a breath or too giving him 'advice'. But as it wasn't intended to be helpful, I think this is Ian's win. 

Ian 16
Martin 40
Adam 45
Sam 60
Andy 69

Andy now had to go so we were down to a four. Adam suggested Steam Power and the rest of us were amenable, so we set up and I explained most of the rules to Martin, even getting them largely correct. At Martin's request, Ian kicked off so he could see what the three of us got up to on our first turns. And Ian displayed the inherent dickery of Steam Power as he carved a path across the middle of the board, creating an east-west supply chain that all of us would at some point use, gifting him an ongoing income for the next hour. 

Adam took to the northwest, delighting at the points-rich white-cube cities there, and Martin and I nestled beneath him. Ian seemed to spend so much time building track I wondered if he was leaving his contracts too late, but he knew what he was doing. As the factories emptied and opportunities dried up, Ian's hoarding of the entire northeast and it's desirable red cubes led him to a narrow win:

Ian 47

Adam 46

Sam 43

Martin 42

All fuel to the fire of Joe's turn-order-favouritism suspicions, as the points finish matched the turn order. There is a thread on BGG about this, but I can't be bothered to read/summarise it, sorry. 

Next up was Llama Llama, as my flirty mentions of FlipToons went unheeded. This uses the same deck as Panda Panda but when Martin explained it to me I said it sounded like Panda Panda with a migraine. I think Andrew has explained it previously on here but I - admittedly now onto the whisky - found it initially bamboozling, and naively went for a a huge score I was *never going to pull off. But once you're through the door, the game has an easy rhythm to it and I went from 3pts in round one to 48 in round two. But none of us could catch Martin, even though at one stage he ended a round with the *impossible hand and couldn't score it. 

Martin 102

Adam 72

Sam 70

Ian 42

Adam now announced he really had to go, and cycled off into the night leaving the three of us. We poured some more whisky and now did play FlipToons, to a dramatic finale.

There's some nonsense theme about casting an animated show but basically each round you deal six cards in a 2x3 grid and then calculate their fame, before spending said fame to either/both recruit new actors from the market or dismiss your underperforming actors who are getting you precious little fame. The catch of course is that as your deck grows, your inconsequential am-dram dudes may come out and your high class stars remain trapped inside it: so it's a deck-builder, and, unless you want to spend multiple actions putting actors out of work, a luck-pusher at the same time. 

As soon as any player hits 30 fame, there's one final round where the most flipped fame wins. Martin looked in the box seat here for the vast duration of the game, and indeed hit 30 points before Ian or I got particularly close. But in the finale Ian's actors let him down and Martin and I tied, causing a play-off. Martin's elephant - big ego - undid him here as it flipped his biggest point-scorer face-down, and I pipped him by a point. 

Sam

Martin

Ian

It was time for So Clover and whisky. We started with a 4 on my clover, dropped to a 3 on Ian's and then back up to a 4 on Martin's, which looked the worst night of your life, or maybe the best if you could remove Gordon Ramsey. A tricky end and not helped by me drunkenly wondering whether owls are birds or not (apparently they are). What can I say, it had been a night. But So Clover is always fun, regardless how of zoologically deranged you are. 

Dolphins aren't fish though, I'm pretty sure of that. 

It's the trick that kills you

Steve and Anja were our hosts last night, with Louie sadly unwell enough to join but Lennon pitching in to open proceedings with a nine-player crack at Flip 7. Weirdly, this was suggested by Martin, even though he has regularly disdained the game. As is our established preference we took out the Freeze cards, although in hindsight they might have helped Ian and Lennon, who both imploded with incredible regularity. In fact I'm not sure Ian ever got past three cards. Adam did though. He almost needed an occasional table for his cards at one stage. 

Adam 202

Anja 152

Sam 146

Steve and Martin 89 each

Katy 66

Joe 54

Ian and Lennon - DNS

We split into two groups. Joe joining the Dalton-Dales for a gambol around the pyramid in Camel Up...

...whilst Martin explained the rules of Skull Queen to Adam and Katy (Ian and I had played before).

Both games took quite a while, even though we only played four rounds of Skull Queen as opposed to the one-round-per-player. The game is somewhat like contract whist in that you're predicting trick wins, but you're predicting for each suit rather than overall, and incorrect predictions can end up giving you zero points if your prediction pirates plunge off the plank. 

Martin dicked Katy over on her very first trick, rationalising that it was 'the best way to learn'. Katy frowned. To my left Joe was enjoying the racing/betting experience of camels who are capable of flea-like springing onto each other's backs, apparently having never played before. We were sure it did the rounds on GNN about ten years ago, but maybe Joe was playing Brass or Agricola. 

There was no Explainer's Curse for Steve as he ungulated his way to a convincing victory:

Steve 46

Anja 29

Joe 26

Lennon 22

And we wrapped up around the same time:

Sam 96

Adam 81

Martin 76

Katy 75

Ian 69

The double-movement cards (5 pushes the loser down twice, 8 up twice) played a significant role in prompting pirates into the pointless sea. Now there was some chat and bedtime duties so the remainder of us played The Gang. 

We made a poor start, although it was a close-run thing with first Jacks and 10s and then sixes and eights (I think?) the wrong way around. Down 0-2 to the incoming cops things looked bleak. But we rallied, aided by a Muscle card, and pulled off a slightly curious win: in the final round all but Joe had their strongest hand in the table cards. This drama didn't quite captivate Steve though, who chose reading his book over being dealt in for the finale. Steve! It's games night!

Everyone bar Lennon was back at the table now and we split into two fours, with Joe leading Anja, Martin and Adam in a game of TRND, which unfortunately I know nothing about, and the rest of us playing a hugely dickish session of Misfits. 

In game one, Ian defied gravity, physics, expectations and the fabric of reality as he pulled off three or four insane moves, earning him the title Prince of Darkness. Both he and Steve started new towers with horrible foundation blocks that we managed to build upon regardless. 

Ian took the win, but as TRND was ongoing we began again. There were rules arguments as Katy attempted to executive-decision Ian's opening gambit - upside-down cloud - back to him. There was a group decision that the cloud rolling didn't equate it falling. Then it fell anyway. 

There was a lot of shenanigans and complaints that the TRND players kept 'using the table' but Steve overcame all obstacles to claim the win: this 'despite Katy' my notes say. TRND finished with Martin the victor; not sure the word 'convincing' does the margin justice:

Martin 85

Adam 36

Anja 9

Joe 4

Joe's final hand was one card away from a huge points haul: close, but no red chair. We did briefly flirt with the idea of one last game, but that crushing disappointment for the Berge turned out to be the night's last act. We trundled out into the night, sated. See you in a couple of weeks!

Plank's Wobbly

There was a flurry of late drop-outs and one happy addition of Adam H as even the venue changed and finally Ian, the Adams and myself (Sam) arranged ourselves around Martin's table, ready to clash swords. And that we did, firstly in the form of Martin's latest trick-taker, Skull Queen. No relation to Skull King, other than that both are trick-takers with a pirate veneer, and both feature cries of dismay. 

Skull Queen follows standard trick-taking rules in that it's a must-follow and highest card wins the trick. There's no trump suit. However, the trick winner will push their pirate up the plank, and the trick loser (lowest card of the led suit) will push their pirate down. Before play starts, you can place each of your pirates wherever you like on the plank though, so it's 'simply' a matter of looking at your cards and working out where you think you can get your pirates to: at the end of the round they'll score for their position on the plank - if they haven't fallen off entirely. 

The extra twists are that this highest/lowest dynamic doesn't just apply to the led suit, but any non-matching suits as well (as long as there is at least two of them - if not, they stay out on the table for the next trick). There's also a wild 13 and a wild zero, and 5s and 8s will cause trick losers/winners to move two spaces instead of one. Adam H was a perpetual victim of this as almost everyone took a turn dumping his pirates into the sea (in a flagrant disregard for how ships work, they can fall off either end). 

Martin led from the moment we left the harbour and never let up his iron grip. We tried to target him but couldn't work out how to manufacture his demise: Ian was on his coattails at first but faded in the last couple of rounds, as the rest of us were just grateful to have pirates left at all.

Martin 109
Sam 92
Adam T 89
Adam H 85
Ian 79

Next up was Bites. This is a kind of commodities game where we move ants along a track - any ant you like, players don't have a specific colour - taking them to their next matching-coloured food spot and picking up either the food token ahead or behind it. When there are no more matching spots ahead, the ant will move onto the anthill, which will define the value of all it's matching food pieces.

The catch is that if you want to up the value of apple, say, then you want to get the red ant to the anthill as quickly as possible - but moving the red ant generally doesn't let you pick up apples, as it lands on them. Mix in a couple of wrinkles - wine for set-collection, chocolate that allows you to grab two pieces instead of one - and you have Bites. 

It was interesting, but felt like a puzzle that never totally swam into focus, probably because although it officially plays 2-5 with the full complement turns were in short supply and decisions verged on the arbitrary-feeling, so much so that Adam T was mildly underwhelmed by his triumphant anting. We did manage to prevent Martin winning again though. 

Adam T 17
Ian 16
Adam H / Sam 15 each
Martin 14

We moved on to Whale Riders. Recalling Louie's push-the-pace strategy, I decided to race to the end, cash in a couple of contracts and buy my way to victory. This plan was harpooned when Ian picked up the free tile I needed and I decided there and then that Whale Riding is a silly occupation. 

Behind me there were plenty of busier whales going about their business in a more ambulatory fashion, and it served them well - mostly. Adam H made a rare miscalculation and the game ended literally one turn before he could rectify it. 

Martin 19

Adam T/Ian 17 each

Sam 16

Adam H 14

The Adams then left us for home, so our traditional closer of So Clover featured just three players. We played twice, and our opening game was so profoundly average I didn't take a picture: we scored 4 each. Ian still had beer in his glass so we set up for a second, and this time did much better: seeing off a couple of plausible red herrings to nail an 18/18 to finish! Ian's Gentrified for tame/region was nice. 

Hope to see more of you next week...