Great Balls of Squidge

I arrived at Laura and Lucy's house to find Lucy and Ryker upstairs creating a huge den from magnetic boards. Down the the kitchen, Laura, Maddie, Martin, Sarah and Effie were competing in the first game of the first GNN festive get-togethers: 5 Alive, which is a card game of shedding without taking the collective total over 21. Everyone begins with five lives and a life is lost when you bust (I think). 

Martin and Laura were joint winners with 2 lives left, and Maddie and Effie had one apiece when Sarah bit the dust and lost her last one. Christmas games were officially underway and next up was one of Martin's newbies, Hold Your Ground! Here we are trying to be last-ones standing as the ground literally explodes in camera-defying ways beneath your feet. 

As this only plays up to four, Effie and Maddie teamed up and so did Martin and Sarah. Laura and I both flew solo: each turn you play two cards from a hand of four that define number of your people to move and how far they can go, after which there's a die roll to determine whether the explody-stick will move (one space; your choice) or explode the tile it currently resides beneath, ejecting the plastic people from the game: and if anyone is cut off from the central helipad tile, they are automatically lost as well. The helipad is semi-safe in that it cannot explode - but as each tile has a max limit of six, a seventh entering will push someone off. The die may also trigger a round of area-control too, where dominant factions kick off the outnumbered. It's all pretty arbitrary-feeling, but fun. Especially the explosions. 

Effie was merciless when the opportunity to screw over her parents came - the apple falls not far from the tree, Martin - and having been in a strong position they were forced out of the helipad; and out of the game. Then the girls were ejected and it came down to a straight fight between Laura and I: she just needed to roll an explosion to win: and did!  A triumph, but at what cost? Look at the desolation. 

We moved on to HIT, the lesser-seen (recently) Knizia card-flipper. Sarah and Adam shared a win in game one, then Lucy joined us for game two, which I won. Nice to revisit this one. 

After all the subversion and theft though we needed something healing and went with Cross Clues. It was a triumph: 25/25 with zero cheating. 

There's only so much healing we can take though, so we reverted to type with Prey Another Day. Sarah made short work of us here, correctly reading the table and devouring opponents to take a victory in two short rounds. I struggled into second.

We moved on to Wandering Towers. I got off to a good start with two potions filled and one wizard home within a couple of turns, but after that stagnated a bit as everyone lost track of where their wizards might be in the vast apartment complex we managed to build.

There were shenanigans. Twice I was close to ending it only to be harpooned by the architecture moving around me. Martin plaintively cried "Where the fuck am I" at least twice. Sarah shared his existential despair. Eventually I claimed a win, with Adam second and Martin beating Laura to third on the tiebreaker. We all agreed the game is bonkers and whilst Laura took herself off on pizza duty, the four of us played something much more sensible: Agent Avenue. Adam and I dug a little hole for ourselves early on - getting two daredevils whilst Martin and Sarah claimed two Codebreakers meant we had to be extremely careful about taking any face-down cards. We briefly threatened to catch them on the track, but ended up daredevilled or codebroken (I now don't recall which) into defeat. Fun though! 

Next up was Stomp the Plank, the game of pirate elephants hating on each other. There wasn't a huge amount of busting and in fact my red elephant did no plank-walking at all. That lack of adventurousness was enough to bring me a solid win. 

Then, after a wonderful foodie interlude of pizza and salads, the entire house gathered together for Midnight Party!

Martin and I had disastrous first rounds as we both encouraged Hugo out and had him subsequently eat us. The Laura-Ryker team began well by picking up +3 points, but massive kudos to Maddie who pooh-poohed open doors in favour of running around the board to the plus-three rooms. It didn't get her the win, but she looked like an action hero compared the rest of us scrambling in a sweaty-palmed panic. Mid-game Sarah and Effie had to leave, and as Katy was arriving at the same time she took over control of their team.

Laura + Ryker -14
Martin -23
Sam -27
Maddie -28
Sarah + Effie / Katy -29
Adam -32

Ryker and Maddie were fully invested now and played Block Party with us. Really lovely to have them at the table as we continuously discovered our 'obvious' creations just looked like a bunch of cubes to everyone else.

Adam surged into an early lead here, and Ryker had a handicap of only actually starting in round two. Adam built a wonderful slice of watermelon and I successfully had my orange cube identified as 'an orange' by Maddie. I knew Martin's blocks were meant to be a slide but I wasted my steal on Katy's swirl-of-colours construct, which was "obviously" a donut. Meanwhile Katy insisted Martin's slide looked 'more like Chewbacca'. You be the judge:

Everyone had a little late-game rally and for me it was enough to catch Adam and share the win. Unfortunately that was Adam's last involvement for the day as he had to head off home, so he missed out on the hilarity of what was next: Misfits. We began as a quintet: Katy, Laura, Maddie, Martin and myself. But after Ryker won Pizza Party at the end of the table he joined my team and supplied both advice and some next-level heckling, trilling "Boooooring!" if he felt the placement wasn't ambitious enough. Around here was also Ryker's amazing 'Squidge my balls' routine, which gave all the supposed adults an even harder challenge than Misfits: keeping a straight face. Or trying to.

Somewhere in all this craziness - there were multiple collapses - Katy picked up a win despite her last two pieces being cylinders. There was time for one last game before kids' bedtime and so everyone was dealt into UNO - which today I discover in fifteen years of the blog, has never been tagged here before. Ryker and I stayed as a team, Maddie and Lucy paired up, and Katy, Laura and Martin all went it alone. 

I think it's been about fifteen years since I've played it at least, but if it doesn't scream hall-of-fame it is at least a fast-moving bit of silly good fun. Despite our best efforts to harpoon them, Maddie and Lucy took the win here and the kids were shuffled off to bed as we debated what to play next, settling eventually on Rebirth. 

During our cathedral-centric rebuilding of post-apocalyptic Scotland, the children reappeared and there was a bout of snacks and swinging. Ryker was at the table when I told Martin I hated him, which I had to quickly clarify was only in the context of the game. Laura admonished me for setting a terrible example, and I realised it really was. 

Katy broke out a colossal box of Maltesers and Laura added a bowl of Celebrations. On the board it looked a two-horse race between Katy and her proliferating energy farms and Martin and his spawny card draws: the first two missions he'd picked up rewarded his initial placements. That's my excuse anyway. I tried to balance the needs of farms and missions and castles and just ended up a kind of bland fourth place. Katy looked poised to sneak the win from her arch enemy, but she'd only picked up 4 missions - and only completed three of them. 

Martin 124

Katy 119

Laura 117

Sam 111

While Laura did some further bedtime shenanigans Martin set up his other Christmas present: Bomb Busters! This is a co-op undertaking with the theme of FUSE - we're defusing bombs - and a similar shared-information system to Hanabi.

Each round we successfully 'cut wires' by matching a numbered wire from our (hidden) hand of them with one from another player. At the start we can all share information about a single wire, but because wires are laid out numerically left-to-right, you can also transmit limited info about the tiles around it as well. There's four of each number (on the first mission, the numbers are only 1-6) and if two of a number are already revealed and you have the remaining pair in your own hand, you're allowed to pair 'with yourself' and reveal them. 

After the very easy first mission, the game makes things a bit harder with extra numbers (1-8) and now coloured wires as well (see 3.1 in pic above) that need to be 'cut' in  similar fashion. It gets trickier fast, and if you're not a naturally logical puzzle-solver (ie me) it can start to feel like the only thing you can grok is the fact you know nothing. But it's more intuitive than Wordy or Message From the Stars, and I enjoyed it. Each mission ramps up the difficulty, and gives you more to navigate. To help, you also get single-use tool cards that can get you out of a pickle - I used these more than anyone!

We succeeded our first three missions but lost our last life on Mission 4. Not a bad return for four slightly inebriated cadets, I'd say, even if our alcohol-infused body parts were now scattered around the academy. It's a bit Quirky Circuits too, in the mission-focused escalation - I look forward to playing this again. Laura and I were fading a bit now though - possibly the wire-cutting tension; maybe the post-chocolate sugar-crash - and we elected to make the last game the final one of the night, so it was of course So Clover. Katy got a bastard of a red herring tile, but we managed to call it out and ended the evening on a masterful 24/24! What a great way to sign off 2024. Thank you Laura, Lucy, and all for a cracking session...

Happy new year all. Here's to some great games in 2025 - starting on Saturday!

Dominoes in excelsis

 I arrived at Laura’s house in the rain to find an even wetter Adam H locking up his bike. We were let into the house by one of Laura’s children and went down to the kitchen where we found Katy already excited about reliving her childhood with a game of Ghost Castle, currently being constructed by Laura. Sam, Ian, Joe and Martin watched from the other end of the table, clearly not convinced of the joys of MB Games.

While Katy, Laura and the two smaller gamers began playing Ghost Castle, Joe, Sam and Martin set up Azul and Ian, Adam and I squeezed a game of Kingdomino in the space between them. The cries of excitement from Ghost Castle were mirrored by our cries of disappointment, as we drew tile after tile of crownless-countryside. But Adam didn’t mind, as his forest expanded to absurd proportions. 

Adam 74 (50 for forests alone!)

Andrew 53

Ian 37

At this point, Azul was still in full flwo but Ghost Castle had been replaced by Dragonimo. During that game, Maddie kept calling out “cracked eggs!” and I thought she was saying “crackhead!” until I looked at the board, saw the egss and put two and two together.

So we played Kingdomino again. By chance, I made Adam pick up a tile that he couldn’t place thus ruining his 5x5 bonus. I wish I could say I did it on purpose, but I’m not that cunning. 

Ian 56

Andrew 49

Adam 46

The other games ended:

Dragonimo

Katy & Riker 15

Laura & Maddie 10

Azul

Martin 83

Joe 79

Sam 39

“That was pretty close,” said Martin. Sam begged to differ, although his board was only two tiles away from a big payout.

The two youngest gamers were sent up to bed and we turned our attention to more grown-up matters: cats in space! Martin, Laura, Ian, Sam and I buckled up for a trip to deep space. It was a first play for me and Laura, so we got a rules explanation, but it was all pretty clear. Roll certain dice values to move, and then land your cats (each with its own special ability such as x2 planet score, x2 moon score, Parachute to safety even if the rocket explodes, etc). Our first journey was the most successful for a long time and Laura reached the last planet before deep space.

Joe, Katy and Adam were more grounded. Literally – their game, Renature, seemed to be all about reintroducing wildlife onto a board that initially resembles a Pac-Man maze made of grass. It was the third game of the evening to use a domino-placing mechanic. I didn’t really follow this game, apart from the occasional cry of surprise like “Double tortoise!” and also a request by Katy to go over the rules a few minutes before they ended. But it was fine.

Katy 86

Adam 67

Joe 58

“I didn’t gloat, and I didn’t ask you to thank me,” she said after the game.

As for Mlem, our poor rolling was getting out of hand. Laura rolled five twos and a booster when we needed ones and fours. On Sam’s first turn as commander, he turned up with his parachute on while Ian went one better – when he was commander, he chose his Saboteur Cat to represent him. A lot of fun.

Laura 28

Ian 26

Sam 21

Andrew 20

Martin 19

There was also a game of Misfits at some point during the evening. I'm not sure when, though. Most likely while Renature was finishing up. Misfits doesn't really play five and, apart from the photos, my only note about the game was "Martin loses."

We reshuffled for the next games. Joe, Martin, Laura and I played Big Top. Ian, Adam, Sam and Katy played Robot Quest Arena.

Katy 21 or 22

Sam 20

Ian 17

Adam 15

While Big Top was a little odd in that we rinsed the bank of money, meaning me, Laura and Martin all ended the game with a lot of cash. Joe, alas, ended the game with no stars. I needed Martin to add up my scores for me, since he refused to believe I’d only come second. He was right. Of course.

Andrew 56

Laura 53

Martin 37

Joe out.

At this point I left, but not before the Robot people began playing Stomp The Plank. After carefully setting up the board, Katy ruined everything by winning in the least fun way possible: draw six different symbols on the first turn.

Katy wins!

Of course, they had to play again and, although Katy could’ve won in the same way again, she bottled it at the fifth card. Adam didn’t so much Stomp the Plank as Shuflle Forward Slowly. 

Sam won the rematch!

And, I’m told, they ended with So Clover.

Thanks all, see you next week!

Bee-curious

 It still feels like a rare treat to be able to leave my flat on a Tuesday evening and arrive at the games venue in barely five minutes. And so I was second to arrive at Joe's, pipped to first place by Sam. Ian, Katy and then Martin were next to join us, with Martin declaring his happiness at the Solid Six being in attendance.

We began with Team Trio, a new game to me but simple enough that I understood it by round two. Simply ask an opponent (or the other member of your team) what their highest or lowest card is. They have to reveal it, and then you continue to ask others, hoping to make a three of a kind. Any reliance on memorising what people have is ruined slightly by the occasional swapping of cards between team mates.

Martin & Sam won the first two tricks, followed by a brace for Katy & I. Joe and Ian got on the scoreboard but then Sam and Martin got a three of kind of sevens, which is an insta-win. But they were winning anyway.

Martin & Sam 3

Katy & Andrew 2

Ian & Joe 1

Then we split into two groups of three people. Martin, Joe and Katy played Big City: a sort of Sim City game from the 90s with its dour functional pieces contrasting with the exciting triple layered plastic inlay.

As they set up, Katy told us she'd almost seen a dead body: her neighbour hadn't been seen for a few days and she and someone else went into the house. Katy chose to investigate the bedroom while the other checked out the bathroom and that's where the neighbour was found.

And after that cheery note, they set forth into various civic planning adventures. A world in which Post Offices score double next to a street car or city hall and triple if it's next to both. A world where Martin can say “It's church time!” and no one thinks he's lost it. A world where Katy can have a park taken away from her by Joe and Martin and be livid about it for several minutes. She was already in last and without that, she never stood a chance

Martin 118

Joe 103

Katy 79

Meanwhile, Ian, Sam and I played Bees In Space, or Apiary, to give it its proper name. It's a new twist on space exploration, with a curious emphasis on making honey and wax as much as discovering new planets.

The mechanic is fairly typical worker placement except your workers’ value (1-4) influences what they can do. Level 4 bees are most powerful but they have to hibernate afterwards and be brought back by taking an action.

The board is rather fussy and I admit in the first couple of rounds I was a bit lost. Ian seemed to know what was going on as he devised a new dance that would make cheaper honey. Which I suppose is a priority for Space Bees. 

We approached the final round I became acutely aware that the score track went up to 100 but me, in the lead, had only scored 15. But the game is all about end of game scoring and any confidence I might have had from being in first quickly dissipated as Ian came from last into a slim first. It was all very close.

Ian 75

Sam 71

Andrew 70

Apiary was a longer game than Big City so while

we finished, the other three played Robo Tricks. After Big City, this was a game they could all enjoy.

Joe 7

Martin 2

Katy -5

Since Robo Tricks was a bit long, Sam, Ian and I played Stomp The Plank. Amazingly, for such a GNN favourite, this was my first game. We played twice. In the first, Ian repeated his trick of coming from last to first and in the second, my cautious chiseling tactic proved successful.

Now we were a sextet we joined together for a rousing game of So Clover. We seemed to finish quite quickly. So fast that we began deducing our first clover while Katy was still in the toilet. 

Katy's clover had a lovely reference to our recently departed (not dead) gamer friend Gareth. She used his name to clue the words “Beard/Patron.”

We did okay with 32 out of 36.

Since that seemed to be over too quickly, we set up for one more go. This time, though, the moans of impending defeat filled the room. But, in the face of adversity, we proved ourselves to be highly resourceful. 

Sam clued Mug/Dream with Grande and Joe clued Hardware/Smell with Cordite (his second word of the evening that we needed a definition for). Katy saved Martin's clover when she spotted that Bubble went with Invincibility, even though I pointed out that bubbles are pretty much the opposite of invincible. 

I was relieved when my four slightly dull clues were solved and full marks to Katy for cluing Television/Crow with carrion. “Carry on.” Get it?

We had a perfect score as we began Ian's clover. We obsessed over his reasoning for pluralising Circuses. It made us think that our first guess of Clown/ring must be wrong, since surely he'd only write Circus. In the end we chose clown/universe and we were correct! A perfect score! 

36 out of 36!!

So with the afterglow of achievement still warming my veins, I set off. Sam said he could be tempted by a quick fifteen minute game and later I received a photo from him with the comment “Incredibly rude game of medium!”

Thanks all. See you soon.

Hello' Ian

This week's games night fell on Halloween, so when I arrived at Adam and Hannah's door I was greeted with a bucket of sweets to choose from, even though my costume was old man in coat. Inside, Arthur's impressive Adam-made costume loomed over us from the corner, as returnee children compared sugar hauls.

Someone else in costume was Gareth, although this was not in person but as he appeared on a card in his friend's freshly-minted game, Utopia. 

There was some loose talk of playing it, but as it's reasonably heavy - time travel and butterfly effects with added megalomania - in the end we decided it needed it's own specialist slot, so maybe that'll happen in the coming week. Instead we kicked off with Cross Clues. Hannah was putting Arthur to bed, so as well as Adam, Gareth and I also present were Katy, Adam T, and the happy late addition of Ian, who made it over despite feeling not at a hundred percent.

Cross Clues was something of a triumph, with numerous nimble minds to compare clues - and also eliminate possibilities they happened to hold in their hand. The only misfire was Liz Truss, whom we pinned as Prime Minister/Cheese instead of Prime Minister/Lightening, due to her brevity of office. But 24/25 is a pretty good show. Then with very little debate, we splintered into two groups. Whilst Adam H, Ian and Katy set up the long-absent Castles of Mad King Ludwig - last seen over six years ago! - the rest of us adjourned to the front room to set sail in Maldivia. 

Despite not being present, this play was Katy's Revenge, as Martin was buffeted through a veritable storm of events, swamped by fog, blocked-in and stolen from on several occasions. "This is why Katy hated it!" he realised, as we took more of his fish. He did have plenty to take, however. 

In the end it was Gareth's final turn that clinched him victory, cannily delivering to two islands by virtue of mooring up in a corner of the board. This catapulted him past me as Martin and Adam were left at sea:

Gareth 13

Sam 10

Martin 8

Adam 7

In the other room, foundations were still being laid in the three titular castles...

...so we broke out Noli, the tinpot crackpot maelstrom of bids and rolls as we all sought to build the highest tower. 

Noli's rules are pretty simple - bid for four actions - but the constant collateral damage inflicted by the winners, and the fact that unsuccessful bids must also be paid, makes the game feel rather fire-fighty. We all got hit by poverty and found whenever someone built a boat, someone else destroyed it. I ignored the influence track entirely, reasoning that it at least gave me one less thing to fret about, but that meant I lost ties on bids and ties in the endgame.

A fact which turned out to be irrelevant, however, as Martin raced up the track to trigger the finale and at that point he had the highest tower anyway. 

Martin 5

Sam 4

Adam 1

Gareth 0

Adam wasn't a fan. I still rather like Noli, even though it does feel like a slow-motion car crash and being down to one boat and frantically rolling uncooperative dice can feel like having your face rubbed in it. Meantime, in the kitchen, Ludwig's architects were playing a slightly more cerebral affair, and things were beginning to take shape.

We busted out Stomp the Plank, now with its previously-defective box replaced. For the uninitiated, it's last elephant standing that wins and each turn the active player flips cards, choosing whether to stick or twist on a bunch of vaguely pirate-themed suits. If you get a duplicate, you're forced to walk up the plank. If you restrain yourself and quit while you're ahead, all other elephants add these wooden discs (Barrels? Crokinole boards?) to the ends of their planks. In a game of numerous early bustings, Martin was first to go:

And, as we continued to bust at around, I would hazard, 80% of our turns, Gareth's plank collapsed, and the impact of it hitting the table caused mine to cave in as well! So this was Adam's Revenge. Stomp the Plank being so rapid, we had time for another quick game in Prey Another Day, Martin's latest filler favourite. 

I won this game by mostly doing unexpected and possibly unwise things that Martin couldn't predict. They made sense to me at the time, although now I can't recall any of them. Probably for the best.

Sam: 5 points

Everyone else: 2 points.

Then I made a terrible faux pas of referring to Adam's gerbils as rats. "Rats?" he said, as though I'd just asked him if his wedding cake was made of shit. 

They are very sweet, even if getting them to stay still for a picture is tricky. 

Adam, still reeling slightly from Noli, left us as Castles came to a dramatic end with cards to be scored and podium places up for grabs. Ian raced ahead of Adam, but then Katy announced she had "All the rooms!" and raced past both of them. 

Katy 142

Ian 133

Adam 122

Ian debated staying or not momentarily, but elected to leave us as a five, and we tried Martin's new purchase of memory game Trio. 

not pictured: Adam's disdain

Each player has a hand of six cards, with six more face down in the middle, and the cards are three each of numbers 1-12. Your goal is to collect two trios (ie matching numbers) that can make the number seven, either by adding them together or subtracting one from the other. Do that, and you win! Or, if you're lucky/clever/eidetic enough to get the trio of sevens themselves, that's a win too. 

cards must be arranged high-to-low in hand

Each turn you can reveal up to three cards, either by flipping them from the middle, asking an opponent to reveal their highest or lowest card, or taking the highest/lowest from your own hand, with the goal obviously being to reveal three of a matching number. As soon as a non-matching number appears, your turn is over: cards are returned to hands and any flipped from the middle go face-down again. So it's a question of trying to remember what card is where, and guesstimating, at times, that if Gareth no longer has the three in his hand his lowest card might be the five I need. 

Adam declared he hated the game from very early on, an opinion that was reinforced by Martin winning it. But we tried again, and Adam won, perhaps somewhat pacifying him. Then we played once more and he announced that no, he definitely hated it. I wasn't sure either - I like how it looks and it's undoubtedly a clever thing, but trying to remember 14 different cards and their locations was hurting my head. Gareth finished the last game of the night with a suitable flourish, however, when he revealed the trio that wins by itself!

Next week is his final games night before he departs for the stars. Hope to see you all there, if not before.