Calmer chameleon

Tuesdays at Joe's. Six gamers: Joe, Katy, Martin, Sam, Steve and myself. We began with The Chameleon, a new Spyfall-esque game of pretending to know more than you really do. Perhaps I should be concerned that I seem to be quite good at it.

We played three rounds. In the first round Sam was the chameleon and the clue was Rom-Com. Halfway through this round Steve finally worked out that all the non-chameleons knew the same word. This probably made things clearer.

Our words for rom-com mostly seemed based around vague references to Four Weddings and a Funeral, but it wasn't clear enough to Sam. He was outed as the chameleon and incorrectly guessed Comedy as the mystery word. We'd won.

At the start of the next round, Joe remarked that it'd be almost impossible to not be identified as the chameleon. I checked my card and discovered that it was me this time. I found it surprisingly stressful. Suddenly the game turned into Codenames as I frantically (but calmly) tried to think of words that would cover as many potential answers as possible. I chose Grey and, boy, did I get lucky. The mystery word/thing was Game of Thrones, which involves a family name that contains the word Grey. All the suspicion fell on Joe who was last to think of a word, and it did not impress. I won!

For the third round I was appalled to find myself as the chameleon again. The subject was historical people, and I worked out that about a third of them had connections to islands, so that's what I said, realising that if the secret was Anne Frank that I'd be caught out pretty quickly. And I got lucky again, since it was Charles Darwin. But not lucky enough. The vote to identify the chameleon was split three ways and Martin had the deciding vote, and he voted for me. I was exposed. I successfully identified the secret so technically I won, but I was still disappointed.

After all that stress, we split into two groups of three. Sam, Katy and Martin chose a number of short games. The first of which, I think, was Spires.

Sam took a risk on the last turn and, apparently, got royally screwed for his bravery. This lumbered him with a pile of negative points right at the end.

Martin 97
Katy 61
Sam 28

Joe, Steve and me brought Manila to the table. It was new to Steve but it's not hugely complicated. At heart, it's a betting game, appealing to the compulsive gambler in all of us. My early game went well, with a couple of choice pirating expeditions bringing in a heap of money. But the dice were being generous anyway, with one round ending with all of us earning over 30 in cash.

Meanwhile, the other three moved on to Steam Park. A massively complicated looking game whose main mechanic seems to revolve around cleaning up dirt. At the beginning, Katy and Martin kept protesting that they didn't know what they were doing.

But before long, those teething troubles were over and they were well into the swing of things. It ended:

Martin 88
Sam 79
Katy 76

In Manila, Joe was in money troubles and had to encumber some shares. He had to pull of an audacious tactic of getting money and also betting on none of the three ships coming in. And it worked.

Steve also struggled with cash but had no encumbered shares to worry about.

The other three played Lords of Scotland. I barely remember it, but the scores were:

Katy 41
Martin 31
Sam 16

Then they played Eggs of Ostrich, which Katy won despite bursting all but one of her bags, but having two lovely chunks of amber.

Katy 13
Sam 9
Martin 2

Finally, Manila was coming to a close. Once I was far in the lead in money mid-game, I'd played cautiously. Steve made a late conversion to piracy but it didn't pay out as much as mine. Joe managed to unencumber his shares to fight his way back to a healthy second place.

Andrew 157
Joe 125
Steve 98

Then we played a quick game about dirty pigs. If I hadn’t taken a photo I would have completely forgotten about it. I think I won.

Now we were all back together, and ready for a game of Fuji Flush. I started to flag during this game, and helped Martin to a quick win causing howls of dismay from the other players (although, in my defence, it also stopped me coming dead last).

Martin 0 cards left
Steve 1
Joe 1
Sam 2
Katy 2
Andrew 2

But then as some of us got ready to go, a hardcore splinter group of Sam, Joe and Martin stayed seated, contemplating another game. I was briefly tempted to sit back down and join them but was quickly reminded that I ended the last game on purpose. And so, banished from the games room, I snuck off into the night.

Lost Causes

Saturday games began early yesterday, with Andrew and Ian rocking up at 6pm as Stan and I set up Clank! for a four-player. We'd already cranked out a game of Railways during the afternoon...

 Going loco

During which I raced off into an early lead thanks to grabbing all three of those point-scorers: four different cubes, delivered, three-link delivery and so on. In fact I was at one stage about twenty points ahead of Stan with less bonds, but as my goods dried up on the east, his bigger network on the west starting paying out big. I held on for the win, but in the end Stan had ground his way back to a two point deficit. 

Back to Clank! I played this a couple of weeks back with Adam and Hannah and we'd really enjoyed it. And I played with Stan with similar results, although I'm not sure it's best as a two-player really. The game is like a card-drafting version of Incan Gold; grabbing what you can and hoping to get out before you're knocked out by the dragon. 

forgot to take pics of Clank, so here's Adam again

Ian decided to get out early, and put the pressure on the rest of us - once one player leaves, everyone only has four turns left to do the same. This strategy worked for Adam, but it proved Ian's undoing: despite numerous dragon attacks, the clanking cubes coming out of the bag didn't stop us all reaching the surface. There was only one winner though:

Stanley 94

Sam 79

Andrew 70

Ian 64

We all liked it. Next up was a quick blast of Lost Expedition. This can be played as a head to head game or a co-op, and the six of us combined into a three-player version. It's a pretty simple game of trying to make your way to the Lost City of Z - following the footsteps of the explorer Percy Fawcett, whose recently inspired the recent film. (Though there is plenty of doubt about the film and Percy himself, as this somewhat huffily worded critique points out). 

In the game everyone plays cards which form a 'hike' - one in the morning, one in the evening. How you negotiate each hike - from left to right - dictates your progress, as many cards have mandatory events, but also opportunities to manage both your resources (health, food, ammunition) and the hike  itself (adding/discarding cards). You begin with three explorers but only need one to reach the city in order to win. 

But a combination of my desire to push ourselves quickly along the trail, and Joe killing off Roy (the only explorer with the specialist knowledge we needed at a crucial moment!) meant we failed three-quarters of the way!

Ian, Andrew, Stanley, Joe and Sam: lose

Peer Sylvester: wins

With our leafy graves assured just as Andy walked through the door, the boys were packed off to bed and we perused the Alcove of Joy. Much muttering was heard before we finally agreed to revisit Lords of Waterdeep. It's been a long time, but we were all familiar enough with it - bar a couple of rules-checks - to include the Skullport expansion. 

Andrew rocketed off into an early lead, before we caught him up and - occasionally - overhauled him. Ian began to regret his big-quest strategy early on, as the rest of us were ducking and diving he was stoically left to collect adventurers - or cubes, as everyone but me insisting on calling them. Despite Andrew's healthy lead I felt pretty confident at this stage - I had the fewest skulls, and planned to play an Intrigue card in the final round to make having them even more punitive for the others. My only concern was Andy, who seemed to be collecting numerous Arcadia quests and chaining them in classic Bate style. 

Then Andy allowed everyone to return skulls to the corruption track and my plans suddenly didn't look remotely effective any more. I'm not sure what happened to Ian - he said he was coming last from about the sixth round - "just like my life" - and he was right: 

Andy 123

Andrew 109

Sam 100

Ian 81

Sticking with the Old School, we then played Poison. Once upon a time this was the GNN go-to filler, but it doesn't come out the box much these days. 

Maybe because the box is something of an artefact itself, with Berger artwork from that classic sitcom Games Night. Andy hadn't played it before, but that didn't stop him taking us to the cleaners on his very first round, scoring a measly two points. I had to draw on all my Knizian powers/luck to pull this one back from the dead:

Sam 15

Andy 17

Andrew 20 

Ian 28

With the time now gone ten, we finished off with a recent classic - NMBR9. I love this game, but despite my many plays I made a humdinger of an error - leaving a space for a 9 where I could only actually place it the wrong way up. I wasn't alone - all manner of swearing made its way around the table as the game entered its final furlong. But Ian shucked off his three last places to claim a very convincing win:

Ian 81

Andrew 76

Andy 68

Sam 60

And that was that! 

Oh, except to say Stan and I played Steam Park on Friday night. This is a dice-rolling, funfair-building game where what dice you roll dictate your tactics for the round: you want to build and attract visitors, but visitors bring dirt with them, and too much dirt at the end of the game will get you hit with huge fines.

Circular dirt, bottom left

In the midst of this simple roll-to-build thing though is a race: everyone rolls simultaneously and as soon as you're happy with your dice you grab the first (or second, or third) player marker. Finishing your dice rolling first gets you the bonus of removing dirt - and if you're last to finish, you add dirt instead. 

This can be really brutal in a two-player game, especially your opponent declares themselves happy with their very first roll. I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but I can imagine Katy getting a kick out of this one.