It's the trick that kills you

Steve and Anja were our hosts last night, with Louie sadly unwell enough to join but Lennon pitching in to open proceedings with a nine-player crack at Flip 7. Weirdly, this was suggested by Martin, even though he has regularly disdained the game. As is our established preference we took out the Freeze cards, although in hindsight they might have helped Ian and Lennon, who both imploded with incredible regularity. In fact I'm not sure Ian ever got past three cards. Adam did though. He almost needed an occasional table for his cards at one stage. 

Adam 202

Anja 152

Sam 146

Steve and Martin 89 each

Katy 66

Joe 54

Ian and Lennon - DNS

We split into two groups. Joe joining the Dalton-Dales for a gambol around the pyramid in Camel Up...

...whilst Martin explained the rules of Skull Queen to Adam and Katy (Ian and I had played before).

Both games took quite a while, even though we only played four rounds of Skull Queen as opposed to the one-round-per-player. The game is somewhat like contract whist in that you're predicting trick wins, but you're predicting for each suit rather than overall, and incorrect predictions can end up giving you zero points if your prediction pirates plunge off the plank. 

Martin dicked Katy over on her very first trick, rationalising that it was 'the best way to learn'. Katy frowned. To my left Joe was enjoying the racing/betting experience of camels who are capable of flea-like springing onto each other's backs, apparently having never played before. We were sure it did the rounds on GNN about ten years ago, but maybe Joe was playing Brass or Agricola. 

There was no Explainer's Curse for Steve as he ungulated his way to a convincing victory:

Steve 46

Anja 29

Joe 26

Lennon 22

And we wrapped up around the same time:

Sam 96

Adam 81

Martin 76

Katy 75

Ian 69

The double-movement cards (5 pushes the loser down twice, 8 up twice) played a significant role in prompting pirates into the pointless sea. Now there was some chat and bedtime duties so the remainder of us played The Gang. 

We made a poor start, although it was a close-run thing with first Jacks and 10s and then sixes and eights (I think?) the wrong way around. Down 0-2 to the incoming cops things looked bleak. But we rallied, aided by a Muscle card, and pulled off a slightly curious win: in the final round all but Joe had their strongest hand in the table cards. This drama didn't quite captivate Steve though, who chose reading his book over being dealt in for the finale. Steve! It's games night!

Everyone bar Lennon was back at the table now and we split into two fours, with Joe leading Anja, Martin and Adam in a game of TRND, which unfortunately I know nothing about, and the rest of us playing a hugely dickish session of Misfits. 

In game one, Ian defied gravity, physics, expectations and the fabric of reality as he pulled off three or four insane moves, earning him the title Prince of Darkness. Both he and Steve started new towers with horrible foundation blocks that we managed to build upon regardless. 

Ian took the win, but as TRND was ongoing we began again. There were rules arguments as Katy attempted to executive-decision Ian's opening gambit - upside-down cloud - back to him. There was a group decision that the cloud rolling didn't equate it falling. Then it fell anyway. 

There was a lot of shenanigans and complaints that the TRND players kept 'using the table' but Steve overcame all obstacles to claim the win: this 'despite Katy' my notes say. TRND finished with Martin the victor; not sure the word 'convincing' does the margin justice:

Martin 85

Adam 36

Anja 9

Joe 4

Joe's final hand was one card away from a huge points haul: close, but no red chair. We did briefly flirt with the idea of one last game, but that crushing disappointment for the Berge turned out to be the night's last act. We trundled out into the night, sated. See you in a couple of weeks!

TRNDing

 

I arrived at Sam’s house at the same time as Ian (bike) and Katy (walking) and, technically, also Andy M but he stayed sitting in his car for now.

Inside, the three of us found the host and Joe and, shortly, Jo in attendance. We thought of a game we could play that would allow any latecomers to join in, and so Cross Clues was brought to the table.

It was clearly going to be tricky with “Air” and “Airport” next to each other on the y-axis. But it turned out that “hat” proved more difficult. Joe had to repeatedly warn us “I still don't think it's Doctor/Hat.” Sam clued “Fedora” which baffled us as to which hat it should be. It turned out to be “lentil/hat” because both are kind of brown. 

23 out of 25

Everyone had, by now, arrived. Adam H and Andy M rounded off the numbers. We had a rare treat of staying as a single group for the next game. Jo had brought in a few prototype games that they'd been working on. Exciting times. It had been a long time since GNN had hosted anything that could be described as a homegrown game and now there were three!

We chose Squirl, since it could comfortably include all of us playing together. It's a word game where everyone builds up words, letter by letter, left to right, using letters that appear on a card revealed at the start of the round. 

Jo talked us through the rules and, like consummate play-testers/clueless idiots, we kept asking for rules clarifications throughout the first few rounds. Each letter had a value and occasional bonuses would appear in order to tempt players to gamble on an unlikely letter. 

It was fun. I played a very pedestrian game, with words like “glitter” looking a bit ordinary next to Sam's “crypt” and Joe's “vexings”. Mid-game, Katy realised that her word “vertigo” wouldn’t fit into the six spaces on the sheet.

Andy poured Maltesers into the same bowl that had previously held Frazzles while he predicted that we’ll all be swearing soon. By the end, I’m dead last but there’s a moment of tension while the scores are added up - will the inventor be beaten at their own game?

No, it seems not.

Jo 143

Andy 129

Adam 124

Joe 120

Sam 115

Ian 115

Katy 87

Andrew 71

Despite my placing, I enjoyed it and was impressed to hear it’ll be published in a couple of years or so. You read about it here first!

Finally we split into two groups. Me, Joe, Andy M and Katy went lighter and shorter. Jo, Sam, Ian and Adam H played Foundations of Metropolis . I know little about that game except the end results.

Sam 82

Ian 72

Jo 69

Adam 62

At the lighter end of the table, the four of us began with TRND - a set collecting card game with chairs. It’s blindingly simple.Three colours, three types of chairs. You pick up and discard from the array of visible cards or just pick up (and don’t discard) from the deck. Once you have a hand of identical chairs you reveal your hand. Last one to reveal gets no points. First to 81 wins.

So simple, but with a push your luck aspect, especially when there are only two people left and the temptation to get out as soon as possible for fewer points is too great to resist.

Andy 86

Katy 72

Andrew 34

Joe 16

Then we played Xylator. The packaging of this game had earlier caught Katy’s eye with its polar bear playing a guitar-shaped xylophone. Joe explained that it was a trick-taking game with, admittedly, a lengthy back-story to explain the cover art. Andy had to go at 10.15 and I was thinking about bed too, so we only played one round.

If TRND is simple, Xylotar is anything but. The cards come in five colours and the highest value of each colour is different. All cards are dealt out and then we arrange our hands numerically, but trying to do so in such a way to disguise the real value of the card because once that’s done, the cards are placed face down so the only information available is the colour and the person next to you uses it as their hand when playing a round of, basically, whist.

After a single round, the scores were.

Andy 9

Joe 8

Andrew 5

Katy 2

It was interesting. Hard to tell what was going on after a single round, but I’m curious to see what strategies emerge after several plays.

With that, I was gone. Thanks all. See you all soon.

*

Sam here. Just to add that we played a couple of games of So Clover and another newbie of Jo's which was a Perudo-esque risk-taking, word-making game that was a lot of fun. I now don't remember who won though.