Thumbs Up

Last night's games began early as Adam T and I played a couple of head to head games as we waited for 7.30 to arrive. Adam had Hey That's My Fish in his bag, and so we began with that. 

Neither of us had played in a while, and we both remarked on how feisty the game is v it's cute and cuddly appearance. I played numerous dick moves, hampering his penguin movements, and kicked off the evening with a win:

Sam 59
Adam 36

Then we played Match of the Century, a chess game that isn't chess, but kind of channeling it in a Spassky v Fischer match-up, recreating the epic battle of 1972. This is essentially a lane battler where playing the higher value gets you the advantage, and a secured majority in advantage wins you the round. The catch is that whomever loses a particular lane activates the special power on their card, gathering pawns (power boosts!) more cards (more cards) mental strength (potentially both more cards and pawns) or occasionally - Adam made use of this a fair bit - negating any advantage to the winner. 

We were neck and neck when Martin knocked on the door, so called it an honourable draw. Ian and Joe followed in short order, and we had half-hour or so until Katy arrived, so began the official GNNing with Courtisans - new to Ian. 

This has been explained elsewhere already, but is essentially Biblios crossed with set-scoring crossed with extra dick. I thought Ian's relentless palming off of white cards onto me was going to put me in last, but I managed to negate the minus 7 points with my last turn, and that was enough for a win:

Sam 13

Adam 8

Joe 7

Martin and Ian 5 each

We followed that with Cabanga - new to Adam. This was the opposite experience from the last time I'd played - there was so little Cabanga-ing then the game felt a bit procedural. Now we couldn't stop shouting cabanga! and at one point Joe was cabanga-ed an entire new hand of six cards. Bad luck Joe!

I snagged another win. Not sure how really. 

Sam 1
Martin 5
Adam 8
Ian 9
Joe 15

Katy had arrived for the finale and now we split into two teams to play Turbo Kidz - new to everyone. 

This is a racing game where the driver is blindfold, and their teammates must guide them around the track, which is a laminated board. The car is represented by a marker, and the racing line the progress it makes as the team-mates 'steer' them by a. using the driver's non-dominant thumb as a steering wheel and b. yelling (sorry - I got excited) directions at the same time. If the 'car' crosses a white line at any point, that's considered a crash, and the driver is returned to the previous checkpoint. 

It's quite a surreal experience as the driver - losing sense of scale as well as direction - and also the thumbing co-pilot, as your movements get interpreted in semi-mysterious ways. A pretty bonkers experience all around.

First to two race victories wins the game, and the Joe/Ian/Sam team thought we'd won it, but there was a steward's enquiry regarding a white line, forcing a decider - and we lost!

Katy/Adam/Martin - Podium!

Joe/Ian/Sam - Odium

Then, after the usual shenanigans, we split into threes. Joe Katy and Ian set up Sunrise Lane, whilst Adam, Martin and I went to the haunted house in Spectral.

I'd found this game bamboozling on my first visit, with its cards-referencing-other-cards geography and deduction-with-area-control approach to gameplay. This time, it was Adam's turn to be bamboozled - although to be fair, with more decorum than I managed - as we diligently made our notes. Both Martin and Adam said they didn't really have a system down yet. Joe won Sunrise Lane and they began playing The Gang as we reached our finale...

Adam was undone by ghosts and Martin surprised by the lack of gems where he had investigators. 

Sam 57

Martin 45

Adam 36

Adam confessed he was watching our moves to see what we were getting up to, and both Martin and I said that was next-level Spectraling. "Well, it didn't work" Adam pointed out. We did some seat-swapping as Katy, Adam and Joe set up Mille Fiori and I suggested Cascadero, a proposal I would come to regret. 

We played the roving Heralds variant: only two of the heralds on the board, but whenever one is scored the active player can choose to move it to a neighbouring town. This apparently simple tweak was enough to send me into cognitive meltdown, and I sulked my way through "all of" (Martin) or "the middle twenty minutes" (me) of the game, as everything I did seemed to resonate with pathetic ineffectiveness. Happily, the other end of the table were making up for it, with Katy at one point complaining about "Cocks in my furrow!" in a loud voice. 

I attempted to rally, like a deranged patient briefly experiencing lucidity, but my grand plan to come less-feebly-third was kiboshed by Martin passing 50 points and ending the game instantly. "Cascadero is kind of like Mille Fiori crossed with a staple gun" Joe sympathised, adding "in the eye" for clarity. 

Martin 55

Ian 37

Sam 25 and DNF

At the same time, Katy wrapped up a win in Mille Fiori. It was close, though:

Katy 209

Joe 199

Adam 184

It was time for So Clover! We played twice, first as a sextet. I don't actually remember much about the first attempt apart from the seemingly endless ways the words went with my clue of priapism, although most of them everyone agreed would have made me write 'wank' instead. "Wank goes with everything" said Ian at one point, like he was seeing the matrix for the first time. 

We scored a decent 30/36 but lost Adam to hometime. Katy insisted the five of us play again, so we did. After Katy blamed herself for not getting a six on Ian's clover, she began rooting for us to score badly, but we actually did rather well again. Katy's clue of Bellend for dirty/hood was a highlight. Or lowlight. Either way, it was an excellent but imperfect 28/30 to round off an action-packed night of no less than eleven games! 

Bum Puppet

Today, the postman had pushed a whole load of mail through my letterbox for an entirely different house. Luckily, it was a house on Joe's street and so I set off to games with a little more intent than usual. So much so that I didn't notice Katy's other half, Rob, until I'd gone past and he'd said hello.

I arrived at Joe's where the host was already entertaining Adam T, Sam, Katy, Ian and Martin. Adam H got here soon after and we sorted out chairs and seating arrangements. I said that this was pointless since we'd surely swap places for games but it turned out we didn't need to. Half the table played the new Martin Wallace while the other half played a new Knizia. Wallace versus Knizia! What an occasion!

Sam, Adam T, Ian and Katy played Via Nebula, which seemed to be about clearing fog. But I didn't follow it much after Katy said “Let's play nice.”

And she did!

Katy 23

Ian 22

Adam 20

Sam 16

Sam said he liked it, despite “getting rinsed.”

Meanwhile, Martin, Joe, Adam T and I played Cascadero. When introducing it, Martin dismissively said it was some bullshit about kings but then we insisted that we needed to know the backstory and insisted he read it out. And he did. In character.

I can't remember it, though, except that we were ministers of industry, agriculture, textiles and money or something. The idea of the game is to put your envoys on the board so that they link up cities and push cubes up several bonus tracks to trigger extra moves/more points. Each minister has a particular bonus track that they must complete otherwise, in fine Knizia style, you are disqualified.

During this game, Joe pondered that whenever he saw a bonus track, he always wanted to bump up it. This was deliberately misheard fro comedy effect and gave us this week's blog title.

It was fine. I think we were far less shitty to each other than we could have been. Especially to Martin who got a juicy ten point bonus but Adam always seemed to be at his shoulder.

Although the end of the game was made notably more exciting by Joe's cat who decided to sit on Adam's lap and stare at the game as if it were easy prey just waiting for a pounce.

Martin 49

Adam T 44

Andrew 29

Joe 29 (but an incomplete bonus track)

It was good, although an odd ending. Options were sparse. Martin couldn't finish the game by reaching 50 points and we eventually ended when Adam ran out of meeples.

While we finished, the others played Little Tavern, with a little variant where they read out the flavour text on the card they drew and the others had to guess if they were goblin/witch/elf etc.

Ian 26

Sam 19

Katy 19

Adam H 19

Then, amazingly, Lords of Vegas was brought to the table! At 9.15! But it was chosen because it was Katy's last games night for a month, and they seeded the game over card a little earlier in the deck than normal, to shorten the game. 

Ian explained the rules to Adam T and I was a little surprised to see the dice-averse Adam H as one of the participants. “Do you usually win?” asked Adam T, seeing Katy’s excitement at playing. She insisted she didn’t (which, in fairness, is true) but next time I looked over, Katy had a very early three-tile casino on the Strip.

We played Spectral, a deduction game in which players secretly look at cards (in a 4x4 grid) and note the clues revealed in order to deduce where the most jewels may be. And to avoid the demons. It was okay. Sam seemed to struggle, although he said he felt confident heading into the closing stages, while I was confident of where to avoid but didn’t pick up enough gems to make an attempt on the lead.

Joe 48

Martin 38

Sam 27

Andrew 24

In Vegas, meanwhile, Adam paid $40m to sprawl into a new square and, in doing so, took over a seven-tile casino on the strip. Ian, meanwhile, was stuck on 3 points while Adam H had 12, Katy 16 and Adam T was on 20. His exclamations over disdain as his luck echoed around the room. Meanwhile, Adam H sprawled into a new plot and got himself a new seven-tile casino for “only” $40m.

After Spectral, we played Cabanga. Martin told me it was fun because you got to say “Cabanga” and I pointed out I could do that anyway. But it’s all about context, and saying “cabanga” meaning “fuck you” was more fun than just blurting it out like an idiot. 

Sam 4

Martin 4

Andrew 6

Joe 7

We only played two of the regulation three rounds because Lords of Vegas ended, with a possible lowest score for Ian.

Katy 44

Adam T 32

Adam H 26

Ian 6

The two Adams left and we ended on So Clover. With six of us, there was the chance of a legendary 36 out of 36. Joe actually exercised the rarely used rule of being able to reset your clover, after he admitted to just staring at “magnascope.” We began well, although we had a few close calls. Ian, in particular, had a mean decoy with “rifle” that fitted his clue of “killer” perfectly until we reconsidered that “white/colour” wasn’t a good fit for “wedding”.

With five out of five, it was all down to Joe, but alas it wasn’t to be. Despite his second chance at getting some workable words, we failed twice to get his clover right.

33 out of 36

No fame for us tonight. But lots of fun.  Thanks guys.