Just F(Inis)hed

Here's a belated report of the January shenanigans back on the 4th from Pete!

I arrived to Steve and Anja's on the final Sunday before returning to work, still pretending it was full the Christmas holiday, to find a stack of games on the table for potential selection.

With a whole afternoon before us (there is some foreshadowing here) we (Adam, Anja, Steve & I) selected Inis. We took a little while on the rules, as Adam hadn't played before and the rest of us not for a while, and then started drafting our action cards.

Steve & I both chose to further delay getting into the action by passing our first turns, which Adam professed to be baffled by (pick your guess as to the endgame conclusion now).

The first part of the game seemed to mainly consist of Anja stocking one side of the board with citadels and repeatedly filling them with orange clans. Meanwhile Steve or Adam built some sanctuaries and Adam also held quite a few festivals. I'm not really entirely sure what I was doing. I recall feeling peturbed that I had to keep passing good action cards to Steve, but I don't recall achieving much with the ones I decided were better to keep 😂.

With time advancing we decided we had better pause to arrange dinner - which turned out to feature a succession of challenges including the initially chosen fish-and-chip shop being shut, and the backup choice requiring cash only, requiring various forays. Those of us in the house cleared Inis off the dining table to make way for for a very nice dinner.

After eating we then played Just One to include everyone - so now Lennon, Louie, Laura and Arthur to bring us up to eight.  We got a couple wrong early on but recovered to a fairly convincing win. I don't think I've played it with that many before and we seemed to eliminate less words by duplicating clues than I expected. In fact, I mainly remember it being useful that Adam and I had doubled up on 'diplomacy' as a clue for 'panda', as it turned out this would not have been a helpful clue..

Next Steve, Adam, Louie and I selected Tsuro. Adam and Louie stayed clear of trouble to start with while Steve and I went down one side. The timing worked well for me and I sent Steve off the board before nearly flying straight off of one corner. Fortunately I was able to turn round but then found myself heading for Adam. Meanwhile Louie had achieved a diagonal across to the far corner. Adam and I crashed straight into each other with Louie finishing the winner.

We then performed some successful tectonic shifting to bring Inis back to the table, and resumed with Anja's hoards of orange clustered around the capital and to one side.

The game did reach a climax in fairly classic Inis fashion. I reluctantly vacated the hills and managed to seize the capital, and together with a deed I briefly met one of the winning conditions by ruling over 5 clans. However I didn't hold it long enough to even take a pretender token as Anja and Steve both contested it.

It looked like Anja or Steve could potentially win, before we all realised that Adam had timed his plotting to perfection, making his bid for leadership just as everyone else had largely exhausted their action cards.

An excellent debut win, though long-term stability of ruling various quarrelsome clans in a hotly contested capital has to be questioned.. And where is the food going to come from, with hardly anyone left in the countryside?

We then finished with a fairly successful round of So Clover! - 6 on Anja's, and then 4 on everyone else's. I think my favourite was (Steve's?) escalator for ladder /luxury.

Another very fun afternoon, but then back to work - hence finishing the blog taking a while!

Four gazebos in one day

 “You're early,” said Sam as he opened his front door. Technically, I was late but I had been too pessimistic in my ETA and had arrived a full six minutes before I said I would.

Inside, Martin, Ian, Adam H and Joe were just starting a game of Pairs. Continuous Pairs to be exact. Ian ended the game as he collected more than 15 points and Adam, who’d been doing very well, was disappointed that there was no winner, only one loser.

Since there were six of us, we split into two groups of three. At the far end of the table, Sam, Ian and Martin played Gazebo. This was a “new” Knizia game - a reskin of Qin, but I guess someone decided that it was less like a territorial battle for China and was more like making the biggest gardens.

The game requires that people put down tiles, trying to make areas of the same colour into which they can place gazebos. A single gazebo is in danger of being overtaken from neighbouring gazebos with a larger area, but a double gazebo is safe. The idea of the game is to be the first to get rid of your gazebos. 

They played twice:

Sam 0 gazebos left

Ian 4

Martin 5

And then 

Martin 0

Sam 4

Ian 5

Meanwhile, Joe, Adam and I played Ponzi Scheme. This game involves picking up money with impossible terms of repayment. I was bemused by the player aid, with its grey text on a grey background, but the game is simple enough that I didn’t need it. 

Adam was cautious throughout,  whereas I was the first to pick up a big card in round 3. Adam also excelled at trading, and he soon had a column of yellow buildings in front of him. Buildings are how you score points in this game but I was mostly selling them for money to pay off my debts. 

This explains the gulf in scores - the game suddenly ended when Joe admitted that he'd miscalculated a transaction and now couldn’t afford to service his debts. 

Adam 24

Andrew 4

Joe 0

At this point,  we rearranged our seats and games. Sam brought out some chocolates: only slightly sqaushed and discoloured with age. We still ate them. 

Meanwhile, regarding games: Sam, Adam and Ian played Cascadero while Martin introduced Joe and I to Gazebo.

Cascadero ended with a win to Sam, "and after all that complaining," he admitted.

I start badly, focusing on blocking Martin and Joe without having a plan of my own. Despite a good move in round three that removed two enemy gazebos (not a term you get to use very often in everyday life) and placed three of my own. But it was too little too late and Martin marched to a win. 

Martin 0

Joe 5

Andrew 10

We set up again. I was determined to erase the ignominy of the worst score of the day, a played super cautious. As indeed did Joe and Martin. We were so focused on not opening opportunities for our opponents that a third of the board lay untouched for most of the game. 

It ended with Martin stealing a territory from Joe, allowing him to place his last gazebo. 

Martin 0

Joe 2

Andrew 3

By now, Adam had left. Sam and Ian played Toy Battle and Sam won. They'd set up to play again but I left before any victor could be decided. 

Sam informed me late of two games of So Clover with scores of 22 and then 21 out of 24. Oh, and before I'd arrived, Martin had beaten Sam at Bombastic and then they'd all played a 1-round game of Jungo that Sam won.

Thanks all, another special evening.

Steaming Mad

At one stage it looked like last night's GNN would be just Martin and myself, so decimated were we by festive colds, but then Pete put up his hand, my friend Vincent said he could join us and at the last moment Adam H materialised as well. Whilst this drama was playing out its finale, Martin and I were playing Bombastic. 

the worst ever pic of bombastic

This is basically an evolved tic-tac-toe, as one player is noughts and the other crosses. On your turn you can either utilise a card - which lets you peek at/reveal/swap/shuffle the face-down tiles - or, if you're confident/optimistic enough, you can Go For It, which means flipping three in a row and hoping they'll all be your symbol. If they are, you win. If they're not, the game continues. Unless you reveal a bomb, in which case you instantly lose.  Martin won two of our three games, with my second-act triumph as bombastic as I ever got. 

boom

Pete and Adam now arrived and we debated what to play. Martin and I had already gotten halfway through setting up EGO before realising neither of us knew it well enough to teach coherently. We settled on Steam Power, and Vincent arrived to greet three new faces and take on an instant rules-teach. 

Fortunately, there are basically three actions in Steam Power (well, there are five, but only three get used with any regularity). Build track, build factories to produce cubes, fulfil contracts to 'deliver' said cubes along links in the network. It's Railways but condensed down into an hour or so. 

After we'd all taken two turns, Martin remembered that each turn gives you two actions rather than the paltry one we'd had, so we defaulted to the game's suggested method and sped up a little. I speculated that maybe early factories on other player's networks could be viable, but I bottled actually trying it. Adam took the plunge and later regretted it, as he and Martin built competing networks down through industrial-age Germany. Vincent focused on the collection of red-cube towns in the east, and I skirted the south, but it was Pete who played the most coherent game, as he began completing contracts and seemed to have all the cubes he needed in his own cities. Visually, the game - already busy with three - reaches overwhelm at five players. It's hard to see what the hell is going on anywhere. 

As the game closed out I'd been assuming that Pete was going to take a debut win. But it was the green trains of dickishness that took the laurels after all. At least the first player in turn order didn't win again - although as the first player was me, maybe that doesn't say that much. 

Martin 37

Sam 35

Vincent/Pete 33 each

Adam 27

We moved on to Texas Showdown as Vincent and Pete took on another learning of rules. The opening round was tight, with all of us taking enough hits to keep the scores close. 

Then in round two Vincent went into an orange-flavoured death spiral, and I almost outdid this in the final round with a spiral of my own, ending the game with a flourish, albeit an unplanned one - like falling down the church steps on your wedding day. 

Adam wins!

Martin 2nd

Sam can't remember the other scores, but was last behind Pete/Vincent

It wasn't horrendously late but after the main course of Steam Power and the combative tricks-are-bad vibes of Texas Showdown, Adam took his leave. Vincent almost followed him out the door, but we persuaded him to stay and try So Clover. Then Adam returned! "It's pouring down out there" he said, sitting back down. I poured the non-drivers all a whisky and Martin talked Vincent through the So Clover silliness. 

I really struggled with my combos, scratching my head at quilt/revolver (eventually plumping for maid) and then taking an age to finally invent a word - inkists - for tattoo/branch. Unsurprisingly, my clover did not merit a 6. 

We began rather well though, with Martin and Vincent's leaves both harvesting maximum points (I particularly liked Vincent's neck for pigeon/blue) but as the whisky glasses grew lower in content, so did our success rate, following my 4 with Adam's 3 (we somehow missed fairy/hero for Puck) and then being bamboozled by Pete's clover, which seemed to have multiple options for three sides and none at all for the fourth (what does one write for boxing/crossroads?)

Nevertheless it was a great way to end the night, as always. Not a marathon session, but a lovely confection of games and people. Hope we'll have the absentees back next week!

Swapping Secret Santa for Secret Hitler

Big T was first to arrive at my house for Christmas games yesterday, as we kicked off a few hours earlier than usual at 1pm. Joe was hot on his heels so after a brief catch-up and coffee, we reasoned that it would be silly not to start playing games, so we did. Joe brandished Take Time at us and we jumped in.

This is a fun little Mind-esque game of playing numbered cards around a clock face, with the not-insignificant caveat that each segment, going clockwise, must be of the same or higher value than the one previous. Add in a couple of extra wrinkles and that's pretty much it: but with no communication allowed after you've seen your cards, success proved occasionally elusive. Did we succeed on that final round? I don't actually remember now, but either way, Katy arrived and we shifted gears into sentient vegetable heroism with Potato Man. 

There was just time for a one-round game (won by me) before, as if summoned into being by Adam - compare above and below images - Pete turned up. 

We played another single-round game (won by Big T) and then Adam H and Laura arrived, so we split into teams and broke out Phantom Ink. Joe and I were the clues, with Joe's team at a slight numerical disadvantage (Joe, Pete, Big T) as I clued to Laura, Katy and Adam H. 

Our first word was Pancake, and despite my spelling confusion, our team's question of Who would dislike it was very helpful as I started <mis>spelling CELI(AC). When asked for a nickname I clued CRE(PE) and from there it was a straightforward victory. We went again with the Adams now clueing for the same teams, and midway through the game Chris arrived to bolster the numbers, joining with the short-staffed Pete/Joe/Big T gang. Unfortunately we lost our most coherent decoder shortly after, as Laura had to go off and escape from a room in Cabot Circus, and Katy and I spent most of our time looking at each other in confusion as Adam regarded us with a mix of long-suffering sympathy and crestfallen disappointment. We did figure out Snow, but our shot in the dark simply negated any opposition doubts and they guessed, correctly, the answer was Snowball. 

We realised with a large afternoon stretching before us we could now play some big ol' chunkers. Big T proffered The Barracks Emperors and Joe Chris and Katy leapt in to join him. I played the Christmas sympathy card to get River of Gold on the table and Andy Mosse arrived to find himself dealt in to it, charitably sitting down to an immediate rules-teach. 

In River of Gold, we're sailing up and down (well, repeatedly down, thanks to Rokugan's curious looping geography) the river and establishing trade routes. Despite the madness of the board, River of Gold has a certain simplicity to it: there are only three actions to choose from: move your boat, build a building or deliver to a customer. The goal is to move yourself up the six influence tracks to the east of the river, and the main difficulty we found with the game is remembering to roll the die at the end of your turn instead of the beginning. 

Andy took the laurels here, with Pete second and then myself and Adam lagging a short way behind. 

At the other end of the table, the Barracks were echoing to the sound of a lot of profanity, with Katy summoning her insult of choice for Chris as he did something or other she objected to. There seemed to be a lot of objecting, in fact - the game is a trick-taker of sorts but with a board where cards are laid and prizes - using the word loosely - to be surrounded and claimed. This chicanery continued as River of Gold finished and we began playing Poison. 

This was also new to Andy, but he took to it with his standard zen vibes and nearly followed his River of Gold triumph with a second win, but I just pipped him. 

Sam 13

Andy 14

Adam H 22

Pete 34

Around now the Barracks Emperors concluded as well, and Katy celebrated her debut victory by going off for chips, abetted by Joe and Adam. When they returned, Andrew was with them as well, like the fourth wise man, proffering a festive bottle of ketchup. We paused for dinner. 

After that, Joe suggested Secret Hitler and we split into liberals and fascists. Katy wanted to know if, should she be dealt into the fascists team, she could sabotage it. Joe admitted there was no rule against it, but it could get confusing. And in fairness the game was confusing enough with Joe and I not spotting that each other were fascists and me being convinced Chris was, even though he hadn't opened his eyes. I knew Katy wasn't because she seemed to be enjoying herself.  

I'm still not 100% clear on how the game works, but I did grasp that we all take turns being the president, and the president nominates a chancellor, and then there's a vote and then the president gets some cards and passes two to the chancellor to choose one of, and after this either a liberal or fascist law gets passed. There's enough fog over proceedings that nobody can be totally sure who is who, and Andy found himself shot dead simply for having the temerity to chat in chambers. Then Katy shot Big T who was Hitler and so the liberals won - perhaps for the best in these popularist times, and certainly for Katy's disposition. 

Laura was returning imminently so we split into three groups, with the Fellowship trick-taker, Babylonia and Mille Fiori spread across the table. But now I will hand the reins to our default note-taker and blogger, Andrew.

*

I was walking towards Sam’s house when I was caught up by Joe, Katy and Adam T. I was astonished as the coincidence of all of us arriving at the same time but this was soon explained when I saw the bags full of portions of fish and chips. I had got here just as people were breaking for food.

I had just eaten, so I watched while the gaming table vanished beneath unwrapped papers and various deep fried comestibles. The chat revolved around games, trying to think which games would work with non gamers. Joe told us about a game where you’re given a word and have to guess if it’s a Tolkein character or an antidepressant.

After the food was finished and the table cleared, Secret Hitler was brought to the table. As Sam has already said, it’s a social deduction game, it was capable of allowing all of us to play. In this game, the liberals have to detect the fascists - as determined by drawing an envelope with your secret identity within. And if that weren't enough, one lucky (?) player gets to be Hitler.

I'll be honest, I didn’t really get it. I was a fascist and, as such, I knew that my partners were Joe and Sam but it later transpired that Sam didn't know about Joe, since they were sitting next to each other and couldn’t see each others’ secret signal at the start of the game . Additionally,  Chris kept passing fascist policies. Maybe he was also a fascist and I hadn't noticed, I thought, or maybe he's passing fascist policies because they give the player a little special action. But then Chris, using a special action, assassinated the liberal Andy M, so then I was quite convinced he was a fascist and I’d missed it. Sam voted against himself as President. “I changed my mind,” he explained. I was bemused.

In the end, Katy was the one who identified Adam T as Hitler and killed him, and the game ended with the liberals victorious. It was quite sedate, apparently. Previous (non GNN) games have been quite rambunctious, we were told. Maybe it was the chips, but it was all very low key. I had no idea what was going on at all.

Next, several people adjourned to the front room to choose a game, and Pete came back with a £10 note in his hand, making us all wonder what was going on in there. We hear from Laura that she’s on her way and so we devise a system in which we set up three games and she can join any of them once she arrives.

The choices in this devillishly complex method was Fellowship of the Ring (Adam T, Chris and myself), Babylonia (Sam, Adam H and Pete) and Mille Fiori (Hoe, Katy and Andy M). Although once Laura had arrived, both Fellowship and Babylonia had begun so she joined Mille Fiori. She seemed happy enough.

In Fellowship, the three of us took on Chapter 16 - a tricky hand for a trio containing two relative newbies. But we persevered at Adam’s behest (he wanted to complete all 18 Chapters before the end of the year) and, after three attempts we nailed it! I was quietly smug and keen to try Chapter 17, but Adam checked the game and discovered the next bit was Chapter 16a and looked like quite a long endeavour.

Since Babylonia had finished at the same time as us we decided to leave 16a to another day.

Sam 163

Adam H 156

Pete 127

I remember remarking that Sam’s position on the board didn’t look like a winning one - a couple of small disparate areas, until Pete pointed out all the cities Sam had taken with his strategy.

Mille Fiori was still in full flow, and I heard Joe take a turn that went on for so long that he apologised halfway through.

The six of us played Fuji Flush and I was quietly confident, since this game is - for some reason - my strongest game. Back when we had a Division charting our results, I had a win rate of 50% which is odd for a luck-based game that usually plays five or more. I didn’t say anything, in case I made a target for my back. Plenty of dick points on display and poor old Pete seemed to have a hand made up entirely of 2s and 3s. And I won again, adding my final card - a 7 - to an already existing chain of 7s.

Next up, the six of us bided our time with 6nimmt. Adam T was hesitant to play, but didn’t have the energy or inclination to veto it. And a good thing too, as he ended up a comfortable winner.

Adam T 12

Pete 23

Adam H 24

Sam 32

Andrew 39

Chris 41

And talking of comfortable winners, here are the results from Mille Fiori.

Joe 239

Katy 217

Andy M 167

Laura 154

Joe, Andy M and Adam T left at this point and the six of us played Ito, using the chevrons from Fun Facts as a handy way of keeping track of everyone’s numbers. The categories were vague enough for some details to be clarified. Is a “popular villain” one who is generally beloved by the public, or just very well known? Good job we did check, because we got that one 100% right.

Another curio that this game threw up was when Sam’s reply to “Things that give you goosebumps” was “thinking about goosebumps”. This is about as close to breaking the fourth wall that real life can get but then Sam explained that when he started to think about what might give him goosebumps, that itself gave him goosebumps. Perfectly valid, I suppose.

Things that give you goosbumps - the lower reaches of the scale

After that, I had enough in me for one last game. We split into two groups. I played Katy and Adam at Biblios, and it went pretty much as you might expect. Halfway through I got that sinking feeling that I wasn’t very strong in anything, but it was far too late to do anything about it. And I was right. Amazingly, though, no one finished the game with any orange cards at all, meaning that die was discarded, unscored.

Katy 5 (plus brown die)

Adam 5

Andrew 0

The other end of the table played Soda Jerk which I'm afraid I was completely oblivious to.

Whiskey and soda jerk, anyone?

With that, I was done. Many thanks to everyone for another exciting year. I’ll hand back to Sam for the final part of the blogging.

*

After Andrew left we were down to a quartet - or at least I thought we were. We set up for Misfits and and then saw Pete was quietly watching us, as though not wanting to interrupt. He'd decided to get a later train home and so we redistributed the pieces and set about it. I criticised Katy for going gong-ho saboteur on her very first turn, but the structure survived, long enough to grow big enough that when it collapsed on Pete and later Laura, they were handed enough wooden pieces to start a small fire. 

Chris then drove Pete off to the station and we were left as a trio. And what better way to end the evening than three cracks at So Clover. We kicked off with a 13/18, did about the same in the second game and then finished off with a triumphant 18 in the finale, by which point Katy was sure we had played four times but Laura and I demurred. 

Now a whisky or two to the good, there was even some post-game chat comparing dysfunctional families and putting the world to theoretical rights. Midnight was not tremendously far away by this point, and after a full shift of gaming, it was time to say goodnight. Thanks all for coming, it was epic!

Pic-takers with a fist

This Thursday Joe welcomed three of us initially; Ian, Martin and myself (Pete), with Katy to join after a Christmas party.

We started with Light Speed: Arena, a curious game where both the explanation and the app-driven scoring took longer than playing it.

I believe that took exactly one minute; every 10 seconds we all simultaneouslyish plonked our spaceships down on the table trying to point their lasers in sensible directions

Then Joe took a picture and we watched an app work through the timing sequence (lower power weapons fire first, high power ones that can punch through our partial shields go last).

There seemed to be quite a lot of friendly fire. I don't think we confirmed if it was disabled or not, but lots of things exploded.

Joe did some mining (shooting asteroids, seems realistic), Martin sneakily skimmed a shot just past an asteroid to hit somebody, Ian was the only person to keep his base intact, and I ... well, I'm not entirely sure what I did. Not enough, it seemed.

Martin 24

Ian and Joe something 16-20ish

Pete 8

I think it will go down as a mixed reception, from 'that was quite fun for a 1 minute game' to 'that was a discombobulating experience, possibly not a game at all', roughly in inverse proportion to final score!

There is definitely a lot you could analyse in weapon strength, timing etc, but there really isn't time! 

Perhaps this is what the offspring of Dice Pool Party and X-Wing would look like?

We then opted for Trickarus, a trick taker in which I explained we would fly upwards by winning tricks, aiming to be highest in the sky, but only after someone had triggered the end game by flying too high and melting their wingtips off in the sun. As you skip over any occupied spaces this can come upon you quite suddenly once everyone is high enough..

We also had to deal with cards flipping all played cards and our hand upside down (from 'day' to 'night') and changing the trump suit accordingly from sun to moon.. At this point we welcomed Katy, Martin demonstrated impressive recall by teaching it to Katy, and we were off!

Most of us... Martin did not win any of the first 16 or 17 tricks (not that he was counting). Katy was probably not actually counting, but was definitely amused by this announcement.

That said, the rest of us were still flapping around in a somewhat haphazard fashion, perhaps under the influence of the Rusty Nails Joe had generously proffered, and you can rise quite quickly when sequences of spaces are occupied.

Martin caught up to the extent that he soared past us and was first into the sun, meaning the game would end as soon as our current hands were played out.

I was hovering around the brink myself, having deliberately taken one trick to go up adjacent to it when I thought it was that or win the following and leapfrog someone else straight into it... I did have a zero and a lightning card so I thought I might be ok, but then things suddenly got very hot.

On the last turn a gap had opened up in the field so only Joe or Katy could win, with Katy finishing triumphant (see power pose at the bottom of the picture).

The progression seems a little odd so far - from a lot of seemingly inconsequential early rounds (which I guess at least help people learn in a first game), to suddenly reaching a point when it seems like every one of your cards could potentially land you in the sun depending on what others choose.

Fun though, and I do appreciate the way it fits the setting. After playing it with 5 twice I think I'm keenest to play with slightly fewer next and see how it changes. 

We then nearly played Condottiere, but Martin's plea that Joe needed to address a poor historic impression of it was trumped by Joe's preference for another trick-taker; Mü, at its perfect player count of 5. Rumours that Mü had made Sam ill are hopefully greatly exaggerated.

This is definitely thinkier, though mostly a more straightforward trick-taker.. However, that's preceded by a very intriguing first phase where you reveal a number of cards in your hand to both bid for the role of the 'Crown', and commit to the number of pips on cards that you and your partner will capture. It's ideally played 2 against 3, hence ideally needing 5 players.

The second place 'Shield' would lead the defence against them and choose a secondary trump from their revealed cards, after which the Crown chose both the primary trump and their partner.

So the bids were also auditioning for the partner role and a share in the points, or as Joe put it, waggling our bottoms at them. I think he must have had baboons on the brain.

I did this successfully in a first round of string bidding and benefitted from Martin winning nearly every trick, though not as much as him as the pips also give individual points.

The second round was much more balanced, and also showed that and the rounds feel very different depending on the trumps chosen, which can be number or suit.

The third round seemed like it might be slightly anticlimactic, with only quite low bids, and with the points on offer lower Martin was pretty secure in first place.

However low bids do create different challenges as less cards were revealed in the bidding phase. Martin, Katy and I managed to run Ian and Joe fairly close.

Martin was confirmed a clear winner. With hindsight, I could have done with being on a different team to him at some point in later rounds to have a chance of the significant differential needed, which is another thing to think about when bidding.. definitely keen to play again.

We brought it to a successful conclusion in good time for me to head off for my train, so Ian will lead on the following round of games.

--------------------------------------------

Thanks Pete! Just to run through the final scores of Mu:

Martin 214
Pete 185
Ian 97
Joe 96
Katy 78

After Pete's departure we played another trick-taking game, but a rather silly one at that: My Favourite things.

My strategy, such as it was, was to ask for the person next to me to rank things where I might have a chance of being able to ascertain what their highcard and what their heartbreak card would be. I asked Joe to rate his favourite Switch games, so I was fairly confident that Slay the Spire would be number 5 (the best) (ed: isn't number 1 the best? If not, I played it wrong). When it came to ask the Martin for his last I asked for Discworld characters, which proved less useful as there are a lot and they're all rather good.

Other topics being ranked included  favourite street food, venues, boardgames (I think this time it was specifically Wallace boardgames), beers, and rather weather, and trying to compare these disparate topics against each other proved to be amusing nonsense.

I have to admit after a couple of beers and the aforementioned Rusty Nail I didn't really pay attention to the final score in My Favourite Things. I appear to have scribbled down:

Katy 3
Joe 3
Martin 2
Ian 2

But I'm not entirely sure if that was the score or an arbitrary collection of numbers. 

After that it was time, of course, for So Clover. Which I also failed to make any notes about, which is terrible form by me, but I think we did reasonably well. We played a couple of games, and I think both times we scored mostly 6s with a single 4 creeping in both times?

It was a lot of fun regardless, that much I do recall. And really, isn't having a good time the most important thing?*

*some will say no; points are the main thing. But that feels less festive.

My favourite things and my favourite people

 I arrived at Sam’s late and walked into the kitchen, my eyes fixed on the table that was already hosting a four-player game between Sam, Ian, Andy B and Martin. So focused was I on the games that I didn’t notice Sam’s new fitted kitchen until Katy pointed it out when she arrived about fifteen minutes later.

The main reason I seemed unable to take in my surroundings was a game of Jumbo. Despite having played before, I certainly struggled to remember anything resembling a strategy. Andy B won as he put down four of a kind that couldn’t be beaten and then his last two cards was a pair.

Katy arrived during the game and my eyes were opened to the existence of new cupboards. Katy also tried to remember a game with stones that I owned that was really relaxing. I couldn’t think of what it might be except Fishy Pete or Go and Katy seemed sure it wasn’t either of those. The mystery continues.

But putting mis or half remembered games to one side,  our next game was Baranoxx which is like 6nimmt but different. In this game, it is the colour of a cow head that determines where a card can be placed. If there are six cards in a row or six cow heads of a particular colour, then you have to pick up. 

It feels a lot like 6nimmt in that you find your carefully considered plans torn to shreds by grim luck. Martin, however, found himself on the wrong end of some events and complained that it wasn’t as strategic as 6nimmt. I, having picked up only one row, disagreed. I won my first attempt whereas Andy got hit by a nasty case of Explainer’s Curse.

Andrew 8

Sam 13

Ian 33

Martin 36

Katy 37

Andy 50

Next up was another six-player. It seems like there was no mood to split into smaller groups this evening. The next game was Bluffit, a game in which everyone has a deck of cards valued 1-10 and they use those to pick up cards on display in the middle. Play a card from your hand face down and then take the card from the middle. Couldn’t be simpler. But someone may suspect that the card they’ve put face down in front of them and they can challenge. The two players secretly compare and whoever wins takes the card. But the hidden cards are never revealed. At the end of the round, though, the hidden cards are shuffled and revealed as the next round’s cards to obtain.

It was quite tense,as you’d expect. No one was really sure what was going on, but in a good way. Interestingly, while big value cards were the source of a lot of challenges, Andy B was quietly building up a stack of cards by always picking middle value cards.

Andy 56

Ian 53

Katy 49

Andrew 48

Sam 47

Martin 36

At this point Andy left us and so, as a quintet, it made sense to continue with some communal gaming.

Next up was My Favourite Things. A trick-taker in the loosest sense of the word, it mixes Fun Facts with whist to curious effect. Each player gets six blank cards (1-5 and a dud) and a topic from the person next to them. They then fill in those blank cards with their top five of that topic plus one example that they can’t abide. Then, those cards go back to the person who suggested the topic.

The twist is, you can’t see what value each card has. Only the person who wrote on the cards knows which is which. So you might choose trees as a topic and think your friend would definitely put Oak as the strongest, only to discover after you’ve played it that actually oaks are just sort of middling to fine.

How well do we know each other? It varied. Ian and I stuck with Martin’s stereotype and over two rounds we gave him “Boardgames” and “Physicists” as topics, leading him to insist that there’s more to him than that. I gave Sam “Everton players since 1990” and he gave me “friends from Maidstone” leaning heavily on our lengthy friendship.

Part of the fun, though, is seeing disparate entities facing off in a trick-taking arena. Want to see Marie Curie battle against the colour green and Stevenage Railway Station? Now’s your chance.

Also worth noting is the entirely unnecessary starter player token which was real metal and heavier than my phone.

Katy 3

Sam 3

Martin 2

Andrew 1

Ian 1

It was a lot of fun and very silly. But after that, I set off home. I rely on Sam’s late night messages to let me know what I missed, including the fact that Ian won two games of 13 Leaves before I arrived.

Afterwards they played Llama Llama in which either Sam or Martin won - recollection is cloudy at this point. Then the by no traditional night cap of So Clover was brought out for two games, resulting in 20/24 and a collapse of England at the Ashes proportions: 13/24.

Thanks all. Hope to see you soon.

Chieftain o' the Pudding Race

Games was back at Joe's house this week, with a fresh tablecloth ready for the hot breath of avid gamers, intent on fun. I confess I was super-tired before the fun could commence, but having missed last week I forced myself to attend - for a bit, anyway. 

When I descended the stairs, Martin and Adam T were already at the table, and Ian just removing his coat. With only Adam H now in the offing, we discussed what we could play, Someone mentioned we could just wait instead, but Joe pointed out that if we did that, Adam wouldn't arrive. And sure enough one round of Sushi Go was all it took to make him materialise, like Marley's meeple-loving ghost, out of the cool night air. 

Martin was already happily reminiscing about how shit the game is at this point, but Adam H was happy to be dealt in with seven random cards to score. There were quite a few jokes about how it was basically 7 Wonders without all the icons, but I don't remember them now. I dodged the competitive rolls of rice and concentrated on Nigiri, and an excess of puddings. It seemed to work. 

Sam 41
Joe 35
Adam T 33

Ian 31
Martin 27
Adam H 23

I was pleasantly surprised by my victory, but I have to concur that the game is pretty bland. "I could name a thousand better games for non-gamers!" Martin harrumphed. Then he thought for a moment and changed the number to a hundred, before anyone could challenge him. 

We split into two threes, with Joe, Ian and Adam H capering off around the globe in Expeditions and Martin, Adam T and I capering with marginally less frivolity towards Mordor in the Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking game.

What happened in Expeditions I am unsure, as I was busy being confounded by the sneaky chapter 14 in LotR: tFotR, where we make our way through Moria, confront the Balrog and curse Boromir's feeble heart once more (discarding the Mithril shirt to make up for his shortcomings). It was a 'Long' chapter, meaning there are multiple characters that need completing, across multiple rounds, and officially the ruling is that any mis-step means you restart the entire round. But the game also does allow you to just restart from where you had got to previously, and that's what we did. The rounds are interesting, but not for the first time I felt that the long chapters feel attritional and the 'doing characters twice' option detracts from an-already flimsy sense of narrative. But at least we completed it - sort of. Our initial triumph did involve leaving Pippin behind. "I don't give a shit about him" Martin confessed. Adam and I were more of a mind to bring him along though, so we played one last round, failed, and then announced we'd won anyway. Almost as though Gandalf has his own Truth Social feed. 

Expeditions finished now too: 

Adam H 22
Ian 20
Joe 15

With apologies I missed any late drama, as I was now wrapped up in the shenanigans of Martin's latest addition, Pumafiosi, a mini-Reiner with quite nice production and a lot of dickishness. The rhythm of it is sort-of trick-taking, but instead of the winner it's the second-strongest card that gets added to a hierarchy of points cards in the middle of the table. During around, these can get bumped down the ladder (minus points for being bumped) and you've some one-use special abilities to take advantage of. 

After ten tricks are played the rungs on the ladder score, and Adam T gets lots of points. My catastrophic middle round and Martin's feeble third round meant there was only ever one winner. 

Adam T 45
Martin 31
Sam 30

They'd now finished Expeditions and were playing Ra. 

And I was feeling the pace of all this fun and threatened to leave, so Martin coaxed a game of Jungo out of me. Adam took to this very quickly as well, winning the first round in no time before Martin took the second. Then Adam added the third and hit the two-rounds-wins victory objective! I do like Jungo. Any game where you get to say the word 'invoke' can't be all bad. 

Martin and Adam began setting up Agent Avenue as I headed for home, which is where Joe takes over the story...

Joe here, thanks Sam. Ra weaved its relentless way towards the end of the ancient Egyptian era, and it was, as it always is, gloriously tense. Ian was on course for the win, but a generous final epoch plus winning sun tiles gave me the late running. "I'm rubbish at Ra", sighed Adam H, in a similar intonation with which he'd announced "I love this game" after beating us at Expeditions earlier. 

Joe 60

Ian 44

Adam 27

By now Sam had gone, and both Adams made noises about leaving. In the end only AH did;  AT stayed, coaxed by the promise of So Clover. Martin threw a cardboard spanner into the works, brandishing Llama Llama, but as he began the rules, Adam wrinkled his nose and said "Shall we just play So Clover?" And so we did. 

We acquitted ourselves decently, with a score of 22/24, only undone by Ian's perfectly reasonable paring of coil with wind, which we all read to rhyme with binned, not bind. Doh! 

I was pleased with my clue of magazine to go with ammo and life. And with that, the bell tolled, and the lights faded on another Tuesday night. Earlier than is perhaps usual, but with a full Sunday of gaming in the offing, in the form of Decacon, we all needed to get some rest.