Bridge of Sighs

Anja and Steve's was the venue last night, as the rain returned to Bristol once more and I picked up Ian and Martin en route. We arrived to find Anja and Louie and also Ross, who I briefly thought was a newbie only to discover he was there to plumb, as our hosts had been without water for two days already. Fortunately, Ross was to prove successful at plumbing in short order - I was getting nervous about the possibility of bathroom trips being eliminated - though he chose not to join us for the evening's entertainment, but instead go home. By this time, we'd already failed twice at YUBIBO.

It's very much a game that requires a certain type of investment. As Pete pointed out, it's as much about endurance as dexterity, as keeping your hand in a certain position for x amount of time whilst various sticks lean on it isn't a Tuesday night staple. But it was fun. 

By now Steve and Lennon had returned from rugby and Anja set about household duties as Steve joined us for a crack at Link City. We began well with Ian as mayor, getting everything right. Then our successes were rather more mixed around the table, until final mayor Joe got 4 out of 4 to right some wrongs and transform our fortunes from workaday into a high score: 40 points and officially Wow City. 

Martin remained a little indifferent to the game, but I really like it. Although I also like his suggestion that the mayor choose the locations as well. Let's try that next time. 

We now split into groups with Joe leading Ian and Martin off to Sunrise Lane, and Pete talking Anja and I through the rules of 1am Jailbreak, the somewhat niche-themed card-shedder where we are funnelling escaped prisoners through a tunnel. 

Pete found Anja and I a slightly befuddled audience, as we both failed to understand what are fairly simple rules, I think because they are a little unexpected: there are no rounds, you simply keep playing on and on until all your prisoners (ie cards in your hand) have escaped. Also unexpected: Steve, who turned up as we were about to start, but then left again, unable to make it to freedom. 

You can play sets or runs, the only caveat being it must be the same amount of cards or one more or one less as whatever amount the previous player laid. And you can also make a run for it by adding a card to the previous player's cards in order to both hike up the possibility of a big set/run - and of course, ridding yourself of a card in the process. In what I like to think are my Eastwood-in-Alcatraz qualities, I proved best at breaking out of prison in the night. Points are bad:

Sam 0

Pete 6

Anja 17

Sunrise Lane was a slightly closer thing. In fact a much closer thing, for Martin and Ian at least, although Joe wasn't a million miles away.

Martin 101

Ian 100

Joe 88

We were still escaping the penitentiary at this point, so they began playing Martin's trick-taker that is also - I was later told - a melder of Rummikub-type proportions: Doctor Science. Ian said he struggled with it, but seemed to pick up speed as they went. Unable to synchronise groups, we finished 1am Jailbreak and debated what to play next. Steve had now joined us for the duration as well, so we wanted something good for four but not too long. When I suggested Old London Bridge, to my surprise about 2/3rds of the whole room spontaneously intoned "Old London Bridge" in a deep, singsong voice. I was both alarmed and intrigued, so we jettisoned all other ideas and Steve set it up. 

I think Andrew has previously explained the rules so I won't regurgitate them here, but I really enjoyed this. Thematically it's entirely nonsensical - everyone builds their own bridge and bids for buildings - but it's speedy and interactive and different strategic approaches are available. Anja began her bridge with a bucolic park, and focused early energies on the chapel track, which determines the very common tie-breakers. All of us - except Pete I think, who was less wasteful - pushed previously-built buildings into the Thames to replace them with others, and Steve was most effective on the pink track, the name of which now escapes me. 

Anja pulled a fast one on Steve in the final round, giving the post its title. But it was Pete - the only player to complete their bridge - who was to triumph, as his sprint up the chapel track, highest-bidding cards and collection of cash saw him dwarf our efforts. 

Pete 50

Sam 42

Steve 35

Anja 26

They finished a crazy Ra around now as well. When I looked over in the first round, there was a solitary Ra tile out on Joe's bespoke mat, and yet Martin had a collection of tiles in front of him that suggested the entire game was nearly over. Fifteen of them!

I also heard Joe bemoaning his filthy luck, as various Disaster tiles emerged, turning his potential haul into a bag of Egyptian dog turds before his very eyes. Ian grabbed a snap of this horrifying ordeal for posterity.

Joe's anguish not pictured

Neither he nor Ian could catch Martin after that spectacular first round. 

Martin 48

Ian 29

Joe 28

And that was it for the night - it was already 11pm somehow so the social commuters made their way back to their cars and home again. Thanks all, it was constructive. 

Nutritious Scarecrow

Anja and Steve were our hosts last night, and Joe was on driving duty: picking me up a little after 7 and then Ian and Martin en route. Joe insisted he knew where he was going and he mostly did, only losing the thread at the final corner, questioning "Where am I?" in a way that suggested maybe he was reflecting on bigger things than the geography of Barton Fields. But moments later we were relieved of any further existential concerns and in the house, where Arthur and Louie formed semi-adjacent participants for the first game of the night: Perfect Mismatch. 

This is a weird party game where playing co-operatively (there's also a competitive variant) one player is trying to successfully clue the others to one of six possible words on a card. The catch is that the clueing is bizarrely restrained to a series of spectrums - sort of - where the extremes are completely unrelated attributes. Is a scarecrow more unbreakable than it is nutritious? Is a career more legal than it is daytime? Ian, Joe and Martin all took turns clueing as Anja joined us for the finale. We had mixed success, succeeding with maximum points only once but avoiding the ignominy of placing the right guess in the worst place. 

Steve was briefly glimpsed but still focused on settling Lennon, so whilst Louie and Arthur began building a den we split into groups of three and four. Adam wanted a Cascadero rematch and so Ian, Martin and I joined him for that. At the other end of the table, Joe talked Anja and Pete through Sunrise Lane, and the mini-Kniziathon was underway. 

Cascadero had a cagey start - nobody wanted to be the first to offer up points to someone else, so the envoys were largely eyeing the towns from a safe distance. Then when things kicked into gear it transpired we were talking different strategic approaches. Adam was harvesting seals as much as he could, working towards not only that three-point bonus but a late-game salvo that would catapult him up the track. Ian and I were probably more tactically-minded, trying to nab opportunities as they arose. Martin didn't pick up a single seal all game, but we naively let him generate a lot of farming income, and he built a huge early lead. 

Sunrise Lane ended around the same moment as Lennon's bedtime, with Joe taking the win:

Joe 108
Anja 94
Pete 90

And with bedtime also, which Steve appeared. As we were still mulling, occasionally to excess, in Cascadero, they began playing Indigo, a game I've never played but thought it looked a bit like Tsuro. "It's Knizia does Tsuro" Steve confirmed later. 

Or in this case, Anja does Tsuro:

Anja 10
Steve 8
Pete 7
Joe 3

In Cascadero we were now coming to a grand finale - grand for Martin anyway. I briefly caught him only for our resident Kniziaphile to surge away once more, reaching the top of his track just in time before the game ended as we ran out of envoys. Adam's seal-powered surge was impressive, but there was no victory this time. 

Martin 47

Sam 41

Adam 36

Ian 28

Adam and Arthur now said goodbye and made their way home. Louie delayed for as long as possible but the Dalton-Dale hammer came down and he was packed off to bed. The Indigo quartet played Indigo again! 

As Ian and I went from taking a pasting by Martin in one game to taking a pasting by Martin in another: this time, Gazebo. We tried a new board, with 'raised patios', the specifics of which are interesting when you play but too boring to list here. 

As with Cascadero, Martin had a strongish lead mid-game, we caught him near the end before he surged again. I had an outside chance of pipping him to the post with my last turn, if by some wild chance he had no blue on his dominoes. But he did, and instead of a triumphant victory I shunted myself from second to third. Fucking gazebos. 

Martin all gazebos erected!

Ian - two gazebos still in their packaging

Sam - three gazebos thrown across the lawn in a tantrum

At the other end of the table, Indigo had already finished:

Joe 10

Pete 8

Anja and Steve 7 each

And they were blowing each other up in Light Speed: Arena.

Joe won this by Griffithesque margins, with Steve baffled by what just happened. 

Joe - 25

Anja and Pete - 15 each

Steve 12

"It's a silly game, but I like it" said Joe, reholstering his space blaster. I tend to agree, even if you spend longer scoring than you do playing. 

Now what? We shuffled seats with Martin Joe and Pete teaching Anja Gang of Dice and Ian, Steve and I playing Misfits. Here are the three hand positions of the former, illustrated by Anja (whut) Martin (er) and Joe (hah).  

There was to be much drama in both games. At our end of the table both Steve and I made it to our last piece more than once, only to have things collapse on us. Ian at one stage seemed to have All The Pieces, and we confected something so top-heavy that the Gang paused their Dice to watch in wonder. 

Meantime in Gang of Dice Anja found herself on the receiving end of fate's indifferent attitude to plucky against-the-odds dice-rolling, almost entirely bereft of dice halfway through the game. But though I missed the finer details, she staged an incredible recovery - just not quite enough to catch Joe. 

Joe 48

Anja 46

Pete 39

Martin 29

Misfits finished at the same time, after an epic of wild swings and roundabouts. In the end it was Steve who took the win, after Ian and I both knocked things over one too many times. 

There was loose talk of getting Perfect Mismatch out again, but was no time for an all-person closer with the hour now gone eleven. After a brief consultation about Steve's facial hair/lack of, it was time to go home. Thanks all. 

These late scores just in…

 I may have been only a few minutes late but even before I reached Joe's, I had a text informing me of the first result of the evening. 

Rainbow

Sam 32

Martin 32

Joe 38

Ian 44

I'm guessing, based solely on Martin's position on the list, that low scores are good. 

I arrived in time to derail a game of For Sale, and the seven of us split into two groups. 

Katy was gaslit into believing she'd enjoyed Bomb Busters the last time she'd played it. And so she, Joe, Sam and Martin set up to bust some bombs. 

Meanwhile, I joined Ian and Adam H in a game of Monkey Palace. It's a nice puzzle game in which you build an increasingly Escher-esque construct of arches and pillars all, apparently, just for one monkey. 

It's quite lovely and thinky with a bit of an engine building aspect in that the cards you pick up as a reward for simian architecture give slightly different supplies of building supplies for as long as they're visible on your player mat.

As we totted up the scores, we were surprised at how close it had been… until i asked about 3 bonus cards next to Adam's drink. 

Adam 36… no, wait, 48

Ian 42

Andrew 36

As for the busting of bombs, I played them scant attention until the mission failed. Joe guessed one of Sam's numbers and got it wrong. “Why did I think it was safe?” he asked himself. A terrible moment of self reflection for any bomb disposalist. 

And now Steve arrived. Monkey Palace was still in full swing, so they became a quintet. They played Reif für die Insel (Ripe for the Island).

This is all about bananas. Ripe, brown bananas in particular. They scored points, I think, while yellow and green ones got you nothing. The only other thing I know about this game is that two parrots are bad. This happened towards the end of the game and prompted all manner of anguish. 

In an echo of the scoring for Monkey Palace, this game also had a late addendum when Martin texted me saying he'd forgotten a rule and could I add 5 points to his tally. Didn’t change the standings in this case, though.

Martin 71 (not 66)

Katy 65

Steve 60

Sam 54

Joe 43

During this, we had finished Monkey Palace and started on Cities, a new worker placement city building game. Ian went big on water, I made a big park and put almost nothing in it while Adam pursued point scoring bonuses. Turns out that was the winning strategy. Go figure. 

Adam 78

Ian 65

Andrew 63

Before we finished Cities, the other half of the table played a quick game of Mlem. This has long been an achilles heel for Sam but he agrees. At first, his luck apparently remained stubbornly bad as he and Steve blew up.

But later he amazed everyone, maye even himself, by getting two cats into deep space. In fact, deep space became pretty full with each player reaching this final frontier.

Joe 42

Martin 35

Sa 32

Steve 31

Katy 30

Next, we all reshuffled. Martin, Joe, Katy and me played the game that Ludo always wanted to be: Agent Avenue. Sam, Ian, Steve and Adam set off on the epic journey that is Fellowship of the Ring. Sam read out the extensive flavour text to give a little context to the co-op trick taker. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow that game at all. I was too involved in an epic game (as epic as you can be in 20 minutes) of Agent Avenue. The gameplay is simple - one team plays two cards, one up and one down - but the knots we tied ourselves into trying to guess our opponents details was anything but. 

For most of the game, though, Joe and I were sitting pretty just a few steps behind our rivals. The game ended in dramatic style. We were one space behind Martin and Katy’s spy and we chose their face up card. When the face down card was revealed it actually sent their spy backwards to defeat. We were shocked that Katy had played a card that would inevitably have lead to a loss. But when she showed the rest of her hand they all would have done the same. It was a fait accompli. Typical espionage - you never find out until it’s too late.

Joe and Andrew - win

Martin and Katy - don’t

Then I pull on my coat and set out into the world. Someone else must have left too, since when I receive messages about the final games of the evening, there was glad news of a 36 out of 36 in So Clover.

Finally, Joe, Sam and Martin played Sunrise Lane with Martin winning and Joe in second.

Thanks for the evening everyone. See you next week.

Punnet of the Apes

Louie was our genial host last night, welcoming a bunch of old-ish farts with offers of drinks and glasses. Was this the handing of the GNN baton to future generations? Will the blog still be going in 100 years, written by Louie's children? Quite possibly. Last Tuesday's monkey-dominated evening still fresh in some of our minds, Ian and Martin had brought their simian-themed games with them again - and while they didn't dominate, they both made an appearance. But we kicked off with Rainbow. 

We quickly discovered that Rainbow isn't great with six. But at least it only takes ten minutes. 

Ian 30
Martin and Sam 27 each
Joe and Louie 26 each
Adam 23

Anja was still upstairs so we busted out, with a jaded sigh from Martin, the greatest card game in the world. "I'll try not to finish with zero this time" he said. He ended second-last, as Adam took Martin's traditional role of perennially busting. Joe and Ian were rewarded for their bravado, and though nobody hit the official 200 point finish line, Ian secured a win as we wrapped up when Anja materialised. 

We split into two anthropomorphic groups: Ian and Adam talked Louie through the joys of building a Monkey Palace, whilst Martin introduced Joe and Anja to Ape Town. 

Ape Town was as tense as Charlton Heston's jaw muscles, as we tried to grab juicy instant points and control of neighbourhoods. In comparison, the building of the palace beside us seemed pleasant and almost collaborative. 

I nudged myself into a chunky lead courtesy of some lemur action, then stagnated for a bit as everyone caught me up and I ran out of cash. But lemurs came to my aid once more as the board filled up, the neighbourhoods closed out, and the finale loomed. 

While we approached it, Monkey Palace wrapped up with a win for Adam. Explainer's curse?

Adam 38

Louie 29

Ian 24

Louie, threatened with the fart apocalypse after several bowls of chilli peanuts had been consumed, exited for bed, and Ian and Adam went at it in Misfits. They constructed some kind of mad thing, that kept collapsing. Looking at it you can see why. 

 

Meantime Ape Town was a close-run thing. Joe and Martin had strong finishes but I just about held on. 

Sam 76

Martin and Joe 70 each

Anja 56

Ian and Adam abandoned their Misfits game here, seemingly convinced it would never end. Apparently Joe managed to knock it over as well, despite not playing, but I didn't witness this as I was having a wee. We split into two groups: the Misfits duo teaming up with Martin to play Rebirth whilst Joe and I introduced Anja to rainbow while we waited for Steve to arrive home. 

Anja picked up a debut win in Rainbow:

Anja 46

Sam 44

Joe 41

While Joe reminisced about the show Rainbow, which prompted both some dubious impressions and the theme tune staying in my head for the rest of the night. Meantime Steve returned, and after a brief catch-up we played Sunrise Lane. 

I've serially finished last in Sunrise Lane, I think, every time I've played it, and I confidently announced I could keep this streak going. Something about the dovetailing of situational cards v situational opportunities seems to escape me. Steve was confounded by the hard-to-determine colour scheme on the board, and the fact the player pieces contain two different iterations of 'shit-brown'. Subsequently we referred to Steve - well, his colour - as babyshit. Oh, what larks. Rebirth continued, with Martin haranguing Adam at reasonable volume. 

The game finished with the Creeping Custard victorious, despite being unable to play his beloved yellow - Rebirth had a kind of jaundiced brown instead. Not sure who played that. 

Adam 181

Martin 168

Ian 163

They bashed out another Rainbow while they waited for us to finish, and Martin exacted some small measure of revenge:

Martin 37

Adam 35

Ian 28

And in Sunrise Lane, for whatever planetary reason things finally gelled for me, probably not hindered by the fact the game was new to Steve and Anja, and Joe had of course been the doomed Explainer. 

Sam 91

Joe 83

Babyshit 81

Anja 69

Adam could not be convinced to stay, and rode off home while the remaining six of us played So Clover. It was near-perfect, but my clover let us down with some interchangeable words. 

And after a brief tour of the house renovation updates (lovely parquet flooring! game table plans!!) we left our hosts, tumbled into the car and weaved off home. Thanks all, it was opposably-thumbed. 

We all Shrove Tuesdays

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