Baby Catan, Baby Ra

There were five of us last night; Pete, Jo, Martin and Sam and I (Joe) congregated in my kitchen for the regular GNN Tuesday amusements. Jo's game Molly House had won the American Tabletop Award for complex game earlier the very same day, and after congratulations on this amazing achievement, we set up Hot Streak, coincidentally the ATA's 2026 pick for casual game.

Hot Streak works best with 5 or 6, though for higher numbers there's a variant we're keen to try, which dispenses with the betting cards, and sounds like a lot of fun for a lot of people. 

Last night's game was the usual hilarious mix of volte face's and stumblebums, and only Pete seemed to have a true bookie's eye for what was coming down the pike. It's impressive how varied the three races can be, the order the cards come out in having a huge effect, naturally enough. Raucous fun, and our life outcomes were equally daft, as recorded by Sam with cryptic economy against the scores:

Pete 69 jumps house

Jo 52 zoo koala

Sam 37 toupee

Martin 25 book

Joe 24 nickels

We moved on to a game that the words 'raucous fun' don't have much to do with, although Martin's early entreaty to Sam to come on his bananas did cause some amusement. Santiago used to be our go-to for five players, many many moons ago. 

It last saw play at GNN in 2019, and I'm surprised to see that prior to that I'd won it in September 2013, as my recollection is of being terrible at its particular mix of bribery and potato planting. Digging a little deeper into the archive, I find the game earlier in 2013 in which I scored a paltry 29 points - it's funny how the losses stay with you. 29 was a particularly ignominious score, as you start the game with 10 money, and receive 27 during the game, so I'd have done better to sit on my hands the whole game.

Last night I won again, much to my surprise - I like to think that my early game of not being completely horrible lead to some karmic fortune at the end, but who knows. It's an OG gem, and we should probably play it more often, even though my next game will be another sub 37-er, you can be sure. This time the scores were admirably close, with 13 separating first from last:

Joe 70

Jo 65

Martin 64

Sam 59

Pete 57

Sam clearly found it as tense as I did; "Let's play coops for the rest of the night" he said afterwards, and then left.

The remaining four of us opted for Catan - On The Road, the new 15 minute card game version of Catan. We were all keen to try it, and we all felt similarly afterwards - it was fine. Just, fine. I don't know what we were expecting, it does exactly what it sets out to do; but I couldn't help wondering if it wouldn't seem completely incoherent to someone who hadn't played the original game. Martin was the first to 7 points and thus the winner.

We moved onto another (sort of) pocket version of an esteemed classic, Swat! This Knizia game was described by Martin as 'real time Ra' and you can see the lineage, though the gameplay and mozzy-swatting theme are very different. One player deals cards face up in a stack, as the others hover, ready to swat the mat as soon as the offer gets tempting enough. It took us a few rounds to get the measure of when to 'buzz in' (they should have called it that), but it's a clever and very silly at the same time, and I'm going to say if not raucous then at least rumbunctious fun.

Jo 71 

Joe 58

Martin 47

Pete 31

Earlier when Pete checked the train times they had all disappeared; but luckily they'd appeared again by now, so he left to get the last Montpelier to Temple Meads and beyond. Jo, Martin and I opted for a final So Clover. I sadly forgot to take a picture of our first effort, but maybe that's ok because we didn't do brilliantly. We went again, doing marginally better - not quite as well as the 26 I announced, Martin pointing out that 6, 6 and 4 add up to 16, the brainiac. I did get a picture of our second efforts.

   With that we were done and dusted, having had more than enough rauc for one night. 

Getting back into orbit

 I arrived at Sam’s to find Ian, Sam, Martin and Adam H having just finished their second game of Strike! This dice rolling arena game has been a firm favourite for the past few weeks, but I’ve yet to have a single game.

Joe also arrived shortly after me and, with all six expected participants, we began a game of Swat. This was new to Adam, and he was given a rules refresher. Five of us sat around with one hand face down on the table like a nervous seance while the sixth one dealt out the cards. When we were happy with what we’d seen, we’d slap the cardboard rectangle and make our claim. At one point me, Joe and Martin swatted just as a negative card was revealed and suddenly we were all very gentlemanly in our insistence that we can’t have been the quickest. I got zero in round one and never recovered. Joe was in the lead from round one and never looked back.

Joe 73

Martin 59

Ian 53

Adam 48

Sam 45

Andrew 31

Then Katy texted to say she’d be here at nine o’clock, which meant we had enough time for a game of So Clover. But what a vexatious game it was. After Joe went clear, we failed on Sam’s with a difficult decoy. Martin went clear despite using “formicarium” as a clue and then I failed miserably with a difficult clover, unwittingly two of my clues, “stink” and “fishy” overlapped, and on top of that a third clue “Pi” was a reference to Life of Pi (Circus/Raft) but only made sense if you’d got the other three clues first. Katy arrived mid-game and she was the first to mention the film. Ian and Adam also failed, despite Adam’s lovely clue of “Tarot” for “essence/forecast”.

24 out of 36

Then Katy arrived and we split into two groups. Ian, Adam and I went for Orbit while Martin, Joe, Sam and Katy played Gambler x Gamble! It seemed to go by very fast, with Joe reaching 14 coins in double quick time. Then the next time I looked, they were all in a position to come first, with Joe winning thanks to his instant win 4 gambler paying out.

Then they played Tiger & Dragon.

Martin 10

Joe 6

Katy 3

Sam 0

And Trendy

Sam 38

Katy 36

Joe 35

Martin 35

And finished off with three more games of Strike, with Katy, Joe and Martin winning one game each.

As for Orbit, I was Japan, Ian was China and Adam chose Russia (although he rejected their black pieces for his usual yellow). I was a bit rusty (like my spaceships, lol) on the rules but it was fine once we got going. 

As always, start with the planets in the astronomically correct place

I stayed entirely inside the asteroid belt for the whole game while Ian and Adam zipped around the solar system willy nilly. Adam quickly levelled up his feul and points statistics to great effect, while Ian slipped back to third after some drawing unlucky mission cards.

Adam 47

Andrew 23

Ian 21

And then, we were done. For once, with no work tomorrow, I stayed until the end. Orbit might have been a brave choice at nine in the evening, but I was in the mood for something more Euro-y so I was happy. Maybe one day I’ll play Strike.

Do you know what's Swat?

 I arrived at a little before 8 and found four gamers around Sam's kitchen table: Sam, Martin, Ian and Katy. They'd just finished a game of Spicy in which Katy didn't score until the final round and Ian didn't score at all.

Sam 35

Martin 33

Katy 13

Ian 0

Then we set up Cross Clues as the ideal game to play while waiting for Joe to arrive since he could just join in once he was here. He arrived mid game and initially misread Airport as Apricot but luckily that didn't hinder his clue giving.

We didn't do very well. I'm not sure but I think we got six wrong. 

Then we played Formula Motor Racing, an old Knizia game that showed it's age in the instructions that referred to the players as "gentlemen (and ladies)". It might be a Knizia game, but there’s player elimination, even though each player has two cars so if one spins out, you can be more cautious with the other.

Martin was the first to spin out and he did so in spectacular fashion. He used the spin out card in which the active player rolls a 12D die and the car in the position indicated by the die is out of the race. If the roll isn’t favourable, the player can roll again.

Martin rolled a 1. No good for him, since he was leading at the time so he rolled again. Martin rolled another 1. How we laughed. 

Katy also crashed and took Sam out with her but she recovered from that to win the race and the game.

Katy 10

Ian 7

Sam 6

Joe 2

Andrew 1

Martin 0

The game’s instructions suggest running seventeen races to recreate an entire Grand Prix. Maybe not.

Then we split into two. Martin, Katy and Joe played Tajuto during which Joe boasted about how good he was at pulling the pink and that “I’m known for my lucky drawers.” In among this Carry On Tajuto type humour, Joe seemed to be looking good for the win until the final count which saw Martin and Joe rejoicing in their shared victory.

Joe 19

Martin 19

Katy 11

Ian, Sam and I dug out Tin Goose again. Just like our last game, I was frugal again and I even passed on a chance to buy a plane when I thought the price had got out of hand. And this happened a fair amount as the auction prices were much higher than before.

Andrew 324

Sam 303

Ian 210

The two games ended at the same time, so we finished with Swat, a sort of cross between Ra and Snap. The aim of the game is to collect scoring sets while avoiding negative cards. The cards are dealt from the top of the deck by one player while the others wait until they’re happy with what’s on offer at which point they slap the player board in the centre of the table. Often this would be accompanied by cries from the other players, annoyed at having missed out on a promising haul. Sometimes it was accompanied by the cries of the player who claimed the cards only to find a last minute -4 fly card added to the pile.

Sam once slapped so slowly that Martin was able to get his hand under Sam’s to claim the cards. Ian managed to underslap (is that a word?) Katy twice, much to her frustration. However, Katy scored 41 in the first round and no one else got close.

Katy 75

Sam 65

Martin 55

Joe 52

Ian 52

Andrew 45

Then Katy, Ian and I went home while Martin, Sam and Joe finished on Sheepy Time. According to Sam, “Martin won, Joe in second and I was miles back in third.”

Thanks for the evening, guys. See you all soon.

We Are Detectives

 When I arrived at Sam’s at eight, I found that the gamers already present (Sam, Joe, Laura, Martin, Ian and Katy) had just finished a round of Swat. It was suggested that I could just be dealt in and work out the rules as I go, especially since Martin was still on zero points, but I declined and watched. I absolutely would not have been able to work out what was going on. A number of cards, bad and good, are dealt out face up and when a player decides they want them, they slap the table. Like Ra, Joe explained, only more stressful. Martin made a decent comeback, but no one could catch Mr Consistency Ian. Although Sam almost did.

Ian 60

Sam 58

Martin 40

Laura 39

Joe 32

Katy 29

Then Katy left and won’t be seen again for a while as she goes on a cycling trip which is part of her Land’s End to John O’Groats journey (not being done all at once, of course).

The six of us then played The Detective Club, a game in a tin box. This is like Dixit except that there’s a word that the pictures have to relate to that everyone except one person knows - we are given the word on a little pad of paper, but the imposter gets a pad with nothing written on it. We chose two pictures (from a hand of six cards) and the word is revealed. At this point we have to explain our thinking behind our choices and then we decide who the imposter is.

In the first round this was made tricky by Martin turning to the wrong page on his pad, seeing nothing written, he assumed he was the imposter. Only after he chose his first picture did he see the word “message” on the back of the pad. This caused confusion and allowed the real imposter, Joe, to get away scott free. I don’t remember who the other imposters were but I have a clear memory of Ian mumbling some non-sequitors about why his picture meant “blockage” and also of Laura picking a card seemingly solely because she liked the spaghetti War Of The Worlds type monster on it. We stopped after three rounds.

Joe 11

Ian 6

Sam 4

Andrew 3

Martin 3

Laura 0

Now we split into two. Laura, Sam and Martin played Quirky Circuits which is, I’m told, like The Mind crossed with Robo Rally. I didn’t keep a track of how things went but Martin told me they’d completed all of the tracks they attempted.

Joe, Ian and I played Nidavellir. Ian had played it before on Board Game arena, but this was his first go with a physical set. And it was very physical in that it required quite a lot of setting up and fairly constant upkeep. The idea is to bid on cards and so collect sets of dwarves to score points. There is a theme. I think you’re building an army or something.

It was fun, once it got going and most of the icons are pretty straight forward. There was one card with so many icons it looked like someone had punched the keyboard while typing in Wingdings, so we ignored it.

Joe 293

Ian 269

Andrew 234

After Quirky Circuits ended Laura went home and Martin and Sam banged out a quick two-player Cross Clues. They were lucky to have “doctor” which linked nicely to Foot, Eye and Pig. I didn’t get all the clues but was impressed by “Achilles” for “Foot” and “Arrow” and “Barbeque” for “Zoo” and “Cook”.

Sam and Martin 19 points

Then I stayed up extra late, keen to play my first game of So Clover. I’d seen it often enough that I knew what was going on, but I had to be careful not to externalise my frustration when they guessed my clues somehow missing that “Tower” and “Bridge” go together quite well. Similarly we must have been completely discombobulated trying to get answers for Sam's clue "grey" that we missed the easy tap-in of "Guardian" and "magazine".

 But we did okay. 22 points in the end.

And then I left at almost quarter to eleven! They were setting up another game of So Clover and then played Cross Clues and Rosetta.

Thanks all. See you next Tuesday.