Galactic Hurling

Saturday's gaming plans went through a series of last minute changes, with the alleged trio of Adam, Ian and myself (Sam) at my place losing the Creeping Custard to the creeping plague and relocating to Steve and Anja's, where we were briefly joined by a pyjama-ed Louie, before bedtime curfew was enforced. I'd brought Ancient Civilisations of the Inner Sea and was keen to revisit its brutal charms, but Steve was in the mood for something spacey, so we settled on the equally delightful Sol: Last Days of a Star.

I think most GNNers know the gist by now, but a brief recap: you're building three types of stations: to harness energy (Energy Nodes); convert energy into points (Transmit Towers); or use it building the Sundiver ships you need to carry out your orders (Foundries). Gates are also built to free up your movement around the board, and time will run out at some not-entirely unpredictable moment, when the 13th Solar Flare card is drawn...

I explained the rules to Steve and Anja, mostly, and we were off. The first few turns were cagey as always, as everyone gets their Sundivers into place in order to convert them into stations. I made an error on the rules, thinking that whenever you build anything you draw a card (-correct) and increase your movement capacity (-which you do for stations, but not gates). Anja was building a lot of gates, and when I realised my error and we corrected it, her movement depleted. Anja also suffered from circumstantial misfortune in that Steve, Ian and I found ourselves using each others gates quite a lot (which means free energy for the owner) whereas hers sat on their hinges for long periods.

Ian and I as the comparative old-timers in Sol, set the pace. I was first to build a Transmit Tower and kept getting bonuses as everyone used them. Ian built one too. Halfway through the deck we'd built a reasonably hefty lead over the newbies, at which point Anja's tactic changed, as she decided to hurl her ships into the sun to generate points (and card flips, accelerating the game). She had no hope of catching the leaders this way, but a separate battle was developing between the Dalton-Dales for third place.

As is Sol's wont, the leisurely beginnings were beginning to hurtle towards a dramatic conclusion as the deck-depletion sped up. I maintained enough of a lead over Ian to feel reasonably safe during the final throes of the star collapsing, but Steve's time ran out: Anja hurled one last sundiver into the celestial orb and drew the final solar flare, claiming third place just before Steve could score a chunky ten points!

Sam 37
Ian 24
Anja 16
Steve 13

A solar system down, we turned our focus to the more trivial business of building site worker safety in Men at Work. New to Anja, but easy to pick up and play, this competitive stacker sees you trying to be the least litigious constructor as you balance heavy girders on shoulders and send hard-hatted employees to hard-luck deaths, as Steve found to his cost

There are two ways to win: either by being the last one standing should all the other players cause one death too many, or by having a combined total of Most safety certificates and worker-of-the-month rosettes, which you get by placing the highest thing on the frankly bizarre construction site. Steve was in the lead late game courtesy of his tie-breaker (most rosettes) as Ian and Anja lagged behind both of us. But on Steve's final turn he made a crucial error and lost a safety certificate - handing me the win. Lots of fun; a shame Adam couldn't make it but lovely to catch up with the Dalton-Dales again! Sorry again about the gates rule, Anja 😯

The Adam Family

A balmy Bristol evening in late May, and what better way to spend it than cloistered around the Table Of Joe, doors thrown open wide, saying things like "you can activate as many energy nodes as you like, but you can only take your own bonus". So that's what we did: as well as the host, there was Martin, Katy, myself (Sam) and the two Adams.

How to distinguish them - in their absence - was the dominant early part of the conversation, but this was later succeeded by how to stop them, as both embarked on a winning spree that made up almost the entire evening.

However - before we even got to that point, Martin introduced Joe, Ian, Katy, Adam T and myself to Reiner Knizia's Spiel des Jahres-nominated L.A.M.A. Apparently it stands for (in German) something like 'avoid minus points', and with good reason. Like Fuji Flush, you're trying to get rid of your cards, by playing them in ascending order (-you can also play a matching value in LAMA) and if you can't go, you can pick up a card. But unlike Fuji Flush, you can also choose to stop playing when you still have cards in your hand (accepting their number value as minus points) while the other players keep going. In fact, even one player can keep going, if they have cards that don't jump anything on the number line. The numbers go from 1-6 and then the LAMA card links the 6 back to the 1 - but being left with a LAMA card in your hand is bad, as it scores a lot of points:

Adam T 1
Katy/Joe 2
Sam 5
Ian/Martin 8

After one round, Adam H had arrived and so we split into two groups. While Joe, Martin and Adam T set up Res Arcana, the rest of us introduced Adam to Sol: Last Days of a Star. I made sure to mention that motherships move before I explained anything else, and Ian mentioned it again right at the end of the explanation. Despite that though, we all kept forgetting to move our mothership. Even worse was that I forgot that activating stations triggers card draws, but I'm pinning this on having to say things like transmit towers convert energy into momentum within earshot of Joe's family.

Adam picked things up with no issue and we cleared up the activation gaffe pretty quickly. It was a game of elusive patterns as we circled the sun like a quartet of wary boxers, each hoping to... well, here the analogy breaks down. I sped into an early lead but with Ian and Adam hot on my tail. Katy languished on the momentum track ("Again!") and we sped through the instability deck like boxers intent on solar collapse.

On the other side of the table, meanwhile, a more combative battle was playing out, with Martin complaining that Joe was 'sapping his death'. Joe grinned happily. Whatever they were doing to each other, Adam invoked some kind of Darwinian strategy and emerged a convincing victor.

Adam wins.

And they enjoyed it so much, they played again. This time:

Martin wins.

They even snuck in a quick game of Good Little Tricks, and Adam T reclaimed the current-winner status, whilst previous incumbent Martin sank to a sweary third:

Adam T 0
Joe 9
Martin 18

Unfortunately I took no photos of any of these incredible events - we were in a combustive game - endgame, by now - of Sol. Adam (H) had surged ahead of me on the scoretrack, and I needed one more turn to activate my transmit tower for a piddling three points - enough to reclaim the lead. With only four cards left in the deck, however, Katy triggered three of them: and one was the last solar flare, instantly ending the game!

Adam 19
Sam 18
Ian/Katy 12

Whew. What drama! After the death of a star we needed something less portentuous. The groups cross-pollinated with Ian, Martin and Joe going for Ra, while the rest of us perused Joe's game collection. Adam T suggested Castles of Burgundy, but at 9.20 already we felt it might be a little late to start that one. Katy proposed Can't Stop and the murmurs of approval had enough weight to carry.

While we hurled dice on our side of the table - occasionally going bust - Joe was weaving some kind of magic in Ra. By the end of the second epoch he had a collection of buildings so colossal Martin and Ian must have felt like throwing in the towel. And despite his collection of low bidding tiles, he only added more in the third epoch, ending a high-scoring game like some kind of Egyptian contractor with a connection in the council office.

Joe 71
Martin 48
Ian 42

Meanwhile we'd squeezed in two games: belying his reputation as a zero-sum Euro-gamer, Adam H won Can't Stop with time and dice to spare. Katy and Adam found they couldn't stop. I stopped too often, except for when I shouldn't have.

Adam H 3
Katy 2
Adam T 1
Sam 0

We also played a quick game of Winston, the sausage-dog building competition featuring a wooden bone and wooden poo. To be frank, I think that description is as good as Winston gets, despite my phone's insistence on naming the game Einstein.

Adam H 20 (+6 for the bone!)
Adam T 16
Sam 15 (-6 for the poo!)
Katy 0

With the hour fairly late, Adam T and Ian now made their excuses and hit the road. The five remainers decided to return to LAMA, which - now we knew the rules - came into its own a little more. Joe and Adam found themselves locked into a stand-off as they both warily picked up cards, hoping the other wasn't about to quit and leave them with a bunch of non-ascending numbers.

The tension was palpable, and very Knizia-ry. And Adam H's winning run finally came to and end as Joe got rid of all his cards, allowing him to return a ten-point chit to the supply!

Joe 7
Katy 15
Sam 25
Martin 27
Adam H 51

I now made my way home as well, with the final four still keen to play another game. I'm not sure what it was, but no doubt they'll let us know in the comments...

Harbour Master Blaster

The recent tradition of gamers just passing through continued this week at GNN. Today's arrival was Garry, a writing chum of Sam. Along with these two were Joe (the host), Dan, Martin, Katy, Adam (the new one) and me.

Early on: crisps and... conversation?!

We begun in glorious co-op mode with Just One. Early on, Joe chose his usual path of obscure cultural references and when he didn't, he kept syncing with Adam. Although, truth be told, there were very few duplicates. Katy had the worst luck when she had to guess "sand" with only three clues. But she did it! Dan’s use of “band” as a clue for “tool” worked wonders when Katy used “Tool” as a clue for “Music” when he was guessing. And we went on to get eleven out of twelve, finally impressing the usually snide score track, which read "Awesome! That's a score worth celebrating!"

And celebrate we did. With more games. Joe and Katy were introduced to Sol by Sam and Martin. Dan and Garry were introduced to Potato Man by Adam and I.

Potato Man was fun, with a couple of evil potatoes being vanquished by Super Potato Man. I, however, felt awkward about referring to the green suit as Sexy Potato Lady in front of three people I didn't know so well. Meanwhile, I had a good couple of early rounds while Adam was stung by Explainer's Curse.

Andrew 25
Dan 19
Garry 17
Adam 10

After that, with the sun on the other side of the table still looking pretty stable, I suggested Manila. This fun game of betting and luck-based piracy was new to our newcomers, so I talked them through the rules. Was I hit by Explainer's Curse? Or was it more of a case of Adam finding a winning formula and milking it for all it was worth. His (almost) monopolizing of Harbour Master, who then invested in blue cloth which sent the share price rocketing up and brought the game to an end sooner than I was expecting.

My attempts at piracy to try and thwart Adam's relentless victory came to nothing, but luckily Brown stuff (coffee?) also hit the highest level which bailed me out.

Adam 168
Andrew 105
Dan 70
Garry 64

It lacked the usual swings of outrageous fortune that Manila is so good at, but I think the two newbies liked it.

But what of Sol? They played the 'vestigial structure' variant, allowing them to build in the outer three rings of the board. It's the same variant that I'd played before but I had no idea it had such a grand name.

Katy began slowly, and was still on two points while the other three had moved into the low teens. Martin hardly built anything but he did build two gates in a row, at the end of which Joe built one of those energy transmission thingies in a kindly gesture of "hey, come on in!'

Katy clawed her way out of last while Sam managed to resist the urge to hurl his ships into the sun and it seemed to work for him.

Sam 26
Martin 19
Katy 17
Joe 13

We were still out of sync at this point. I brought out High Society, hoping to time its ending with the finale of Sol but I misjudged it. The game, new to Garry, was mean as ever. Garry picked up an early "1/2" card, meaning he was rich enough to pick up the 10 card. But he was in the strange situation of always bidding against players who thought that the cards were worth twice as much as he did. As such, despite picking up a "x2" card later on, he lost due to lack of funds. It ended with both he and Dan on one card left in their hands, but Dan's was the $25 million card.

Dan 12
Andrew 6
Adam 6
Garry Out! (But scored 11)

Sol had ended and they banged out a quick Kribbeln. And what a game it was. I only caught the end, but even in those few rolls, drama ensued.

Sam was poised to win, needing to beat 29 with his six dice, rolled 6, 6, 6, 4, 4, 2. So close. He picked up the 2 and rolled it... a one! How cruel.

Then Joe, also needing to beat 29, rolled 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 3. But instead of just picking up the three to roll again, he picked up the three and four. Audacious! And he rolled a 6-6! Amazing. It put him in joint first with Martin and won the game on the tie-breaker.

Joe 22 (plus highest Krib)
Martin 22
Sam 20
Katy 15

Then it was time for Adam to leave. I suggested he could join in by phone if we played Incan Gold, and the mention of this triggered a sudden desire in Joe, wiping aside the previous suggestions of 6nimmt or Tomate Karate. We played Diamant, the new version of Incan Gold, where flimsy paper tents are replaced by sturdy cardboard chests and Zombie Ladies are sadly gone, with rolling logs of spikes in their place.

Katy stayed in longest in round one and got a 17 card all to herself! After that, it was all a matter of trying to catch her. Martin decided the only way to win was to stay in longer than she did. Sam went in the opposite direction, getting out early as soon is it seemed profitable (picking up a rare artifact in round three). And it could’ve worked if the more adventurous among us had had a little more bad luck. Instead, it was a high scoring game.

Katy 54
Andrew 33
Martin 31
Sam 31
Joe 29
Garry 27
Dan 21

And despite coming last, Dan made a note of the game on his phone, declaring that he was going to buy it. A convert!

And then Katy and I departed, with the clock just passing eleven. The rest carried on with Kakerlaken Poker. Thanks to some notes from Sam, I can tell you that “Dan began haemorrhaging stink bugs” was as a remarkably evocative description of the game as you could wish for. Garry, professing uselessness at the real poker, began badly. And just as Martin hit two of something, he passed a card to Dan, saying it was a stink bug. Dan didn’t believe him, but Martin spoke the truth.

Dan loses
Everyone else wins.

Thanks to Sam for the late night results, and thanks to all for joining in for a fun evening. I wonder who our travelling visitor will be next week.

Beginner’s Luck vs. Explainer’s Curse

This week, Joe was the host and we began as a tentative six: five present and one expected imminently. Joe and friend of the family Dan, Sam, Martin and me, with Adam sure to arrive at any second. There was some idle chit-chat as if the presence of a newcomer was enough to put us off our natural inclinations to skip past the small talk and get down to the nitty-gritty.

With Adam surely about to appear at the door step, we decided that Team Play would be a good six player option to take us up to the time when Katy and then Ian were due to arrive. Dutifully, Joe talked Dan through the rules and he was almost finished when there was a knock at the door. It was Adam. And Katy. Too many players for Team Play and Joe put it away with a sigh.

Now we were seven. Katy was angling for a game of Lords Of Vegas, all they (Joe, Katy and Dan) had to do was wait for Ian to get here and they. Adam, Sam, Martin and I played Sol, the recent debutante. Martin looked through the rules as we set up (but he didn't seem keen on reading the short stories that go with it) and clarified a couple more rules.

In the game, Martin and I are both energy rich thanks to our very popular gates. Sam begins hurling his ships into the sun very early on, making him the man to beat. Was he banking on the sun collapsing quickly? He was to be disappointed as card after card was revealed without a red sign indicating the sun is becoming more unstable.

Adam finally got together enough cubes to complete his plan, but then the sun let out a solar flare and his stock of 13 energy cubes was suddenly depleted by half. How we laughed at his discomfort. Then we allowed him a do-over (since other players had been already given the same opportunity) in which he didn't take the optional bonus cube he was entitled to and therefore his 12 energy cubes were safe.

As the game progressed it looked like the sun wasn't going to collapse at all. I hurled four ships in one turn into the dying star and still it didn't end the game. The final red card was actually the final card in the deck. Luckily no one was in a position to catch me, although Adam was able to grab joint second with the last turn of the game.

Andrew 27
Adam 24
Martin 24
Sam 20

The other three played smaller shorter games. First was Kingdomino, a new game to Dan but one he seemed to take to rather well.

Dan 54
Joe 40
Katy 38

After this, they played the only Taiwanese game that Joe owns, apparently. namely, Castle Crush. Again it was new to Dan again, again, he came out victor. He modestly tried to pass off his second win in a row as beginner's luck while Joe tried to tell him about Explainer's Curse and how it is a real thing.

Dan 24
Katy 21
Joe 15

Ian arrived during Castle Crush and was informed swiftly that he would be playing Lords of Vegas as soon as they were done. Something he had no problem with.

The table was heaving with the joys of modern boardgaming and for a while, you could barely see the tabletop for cardboard.

After Sol, Adam, Martin, Sam and I got stuck into Senators the craze that's turning into a tradition. In this game of political bribery in Rome, Martin set off into an early lead while Adam and I fell back. But Adam and I both had a card that would let you steal points from the leading player. With this in mind, I cashed in as soon as I could and Sam and Adam joined me. Suddenly, Martin fell from first to joint last.

He tried to claw his way back but was beset by misfortune. In a blind bid for a senator, he bid seven talents and Sam bid eight, which is exactly how this game should be played. Then I got a stroke of luck in a round where each player has the option of buying a senator for a steadily decreasing value. I passed with the price at nine. Martin prevaricated over eight but then passed. Adam passed on seven and Sam passed on six. I didn't expect to get another chance and I snapped it up for five! Good job, too, because the fourth war came soon after.

Andrew 9
Sam 8
Martin 7
Adam 7

In Lords of Vegas, Dan's beginner's luck seemed to be holding. His first three plots where all in the same block. Katy was delighted, meanwhile, to have a casino on the strip at almost the very start of the game and then spent most of the game chanting "Strip! Strip! Strip!" whenever a new card was revealed.

But for us lot, Senators was followed up by the lighter fare of Spy Tricks. The four greatest minds of GNN clashed over this simple trick taker and deduction game and, seemingly, cancelled and each other out. In the first round, none of us got a single guess right. Astonishing.

In the second round, I guessed the right rank and Sam got the correct suit, but our attempts at finding the right card were hopeless. Any signs of improvement, though, were mere illusion as we bumbled through the last round with only me guessing something right: the suit. And that's how I managed to win a game of Spy Tricks with a score that would normally see you in distant last.

Zero correct

Andrew 7
Sam 2
Martin 0
Adam 0

Adam went home at this point and Lords of Vegas hadn't finished so we cracked out a couple of confused rounds of Sticheln (chosen after Martin checked the remaining cards in Lords of Vegas to get an idea of how much time they had left to play). Despite Martin scoring no points at all in round one, his second round stole the game.

Martin 16
Andrew 14
Sam 12

Lords of Vegas continued with Dan's six tile casino flipping to Ian in an unlikely re-organisation. It didn’t last and, if Ian’s claim to be “floundering” is anything to go by, it was the final bit of luck to go Ian’s way.

Bottom left, Ian has stolen Dan's casino

Katy, though, was in such a good position that she was able to leave the table between her turns and have a conversation with Joe’s wife. That’s confidence for you. And then, later on, she ran out of dice: a first for her. All of this added up to an impressive win, despite the Strip barely paying out at all.

Katy 54
Joe 40
Dan 26
Ian 23

Now we were seven again and, despite it creeping towards eleven o’clock, we had one more game inside us. Pairs. Joe described it to Dan as being like Blackjack in that we were aiming for 21 points. But then he had to admit that, apart from that, it was nothing like Blackjack at all.

I was Mr Cautious and, for once, it paid off. I was the only one to score in every round. Ian sneered at my and Katy’s timidness seconds before he went bust, and similarly Martin cursed himself by saying “I’ve got to go big,” before being dealt a pair.

Andrew 22
Ian 16
Sam 16
Katy 15
Joe 13
Dan 7
Martin 2

And so we were done.Thanks to Joe and a hat-tip to Dan. See you all next week.

A Sol with a deadly weapon

Except there aren’t any deadly weapons in Sol, the new game that Ian, Sam and I tackled yesterday evening. This is a fairly simple strategy where you have to... well, I’m still not sure. Keep a dying sun alive by putting energy into it? Something like that. Use your ships to build stations that give you energy, allow you transmit energy or let you build more ships.

We set off just fine. Ian even had a thematically linked beer, a lovely bottle of Sol. But something just wasn’t working. It felt like three games of solitaire on the same board. The rules allow each player to use other players’ stations, but I couldn’t see a reason to.

Then I asked if our motherships, stationed furthest from the sun where all our ships are launched, are supposed to move? I noticed all these arrows on the board going in an anticlockwise direction and thought they might mean something. Sam checked the rules. Indeed, our motherships are supposed to orbit the sun.

Now the game made more sense, and was a lot more enjoyable as a result. We needed to plan ahead a little bit more this time. However, Sam had to delete the tweet of us playing the game since it was the kind of mistake that is clearly visible from looking at the board.

Spot the mistake

As for the score, I went from not scoring any halfway through the game to suddenly leaping up the track and squeaked a win just as the sun finally died.

Andrew 22ish
Sam 21ish
Ian 18ish

What the game would look like on a real sun

After this it was still only about nine o’clock so we felt there was another big game in us. We went for an old familiar: Tinners’ Trail.

We began like greyhounds out of the traps, with iron and copper both at their highest possible prices in round one. Then, in round two, they collapsed to their lowest. This meant, as round three dawned, there were still a lot of cubes on the board.

Sam went for trains, Ian went for adits, I went for boats, I think. Anyway, it was a close game under difficult circumstances.

Ian 89 (plus 4 cash)
Sam 89 (no cash)
Andrew 83

Next we played Spy Tricks. I fell into last place with no correct guesses in round one and I stayed there, unable to make by Double Agent piece work in my favour. Sam played us all for fools with his clever reaction to Ian’s guess of red five (“I don’t like how quickly you did that”) despite him having the red five in his hand. Ian’s unerring eye for the missing card won through in the end, though.

Ian 22
Sam 19
Andrew 5

Finally, after all that astrophysics, mining and espionage, we had to get a letter to the princess! Yes, we finished on Love Letter. I ran into a 2-0-0 lead. Then Sam brought it back to 2-2-0 before Ian staged a comeback. It was 2-2-2 and Sam won in the final round, meaning we all won at least one game tonight.

Love Letter's version of dead man's hand.

Sam 3
Andrew 2
Ian 2

Cheers for hosting, Sam, and see you all soon.