Safe Potatoes

This week, the familiar five of Joe, Sam, Martin, Ian and me rocked up around Joe's kitchen table for our regular dose of quality entertainment and pretentious crisps.

First up was Gold Fever, the game of randomly pulling things from your hessian bag. Gold is good, gravel is bad. It was my first go and I was told the few rules while we were playing.

It was nice. Sam's bag seemed to be moulting and, as the early leader, perhaps because it was full of other people's gravel. Joe won it when a ruby came out of someone's bag, signifying an undignified rush to be the first to pull out a nugget of gold. You could say he literally pulled it out of the bag at the last minute.

Joe 4
Sam 3
Martin 3
Ian 2 or 3
Andrew 2

After this light fare, we dug out Santiago. An old game but one that is perfect for five. It's a game that mixes bidding with bribery, and tile placement with hopes of some short term co-operation from the very bribeable Canal Master. He decides where the irrigation channel goes and whose fields get watered.

Santiago's remarkably bland board

It's a game, like many others, that prompts the kind of sentences that could be misconstrued by anyone listening in, and not just the phrase currently adorning the heading of this particular blog post. "No damp patches," sighed Ian, looking at a board where all the irrigation channels were surrounded. "If there'd been a banana out there, things would have been very different," mused Martin as he looked over the crops on offer. Such is the arcane language used by the finest gamers. Or desperate luck-junkies. However you care to look at us.

Martin, much like last week, had a final turn where it felt like he'd either win or lose by his own hand. He made the right choice, but it was closer than anyone suspected.

Martin 98
Sam 97
Ian 69
Joe 64
Andrew 43

The third game of the evening was good old Decrypto. Sam and Martin buddied up into their usual duo, while Ian, Joe and I faced them from across the table.

Sam and Martin started in fine style, putting forward six clues in the first two rounds that bordered on raunchy. "Red, hole, hot" was followed by "Tits, arse, nuts." They were definitely thematic but also good clues. "Tits", especially, baffled us, becoming a real weight around our necks.

Joe initially used a "military grade" torch to try and indicate which word he thought went with which clue, but it needed five or six clicks to turn off while it cycled through its various lighting options. "It's still on!" we had to tell him, once he'd put it down. Before long he gave up on it as being impractical.

Both teams worked out at least one word early on (we got squirrel from Red and Nuts, they got pencil from Scribe and Lead) but any kind of certainty alluded us. Indeed, after some "high brow" clues from Sam, I was convinced we didn't have any of them right. In the end, they got two interceptions to our one and it was over in round seven.

Martin and Sam, Spies Like Us
Ian, Andrew and Joe, Spies dislike us.

Despite Decrypto's length, there was still enough time for one more game: Tag City. I managed a remarkable achievement by filling in a coloured area in only three moves. But that was the end of my dominance. While I was mucking about with the low scoring yellows, everyone else had made a claim for the larger and more rewarding areas which they proceeded to complete long before I could challenge for them.

Perhaps five players is too many for this game, since it's impossible to keep track of what people want and how to avoid giving it to them. As such, it's a bit of a luckfest. Right?

Joe 36
Ian 29
Martin 23
Andrew 8
Sam 7

And once that was done, we could no longer ignore the distant call of our beds. Mine even had a hot water bottle in it I'd put there before I'd gone out.

Thanks to all for another fun evening.

Red Dead Recreation

It was the first Tuesday meet of the year for us at GNN and, after a couple of days of emails that saw the potential attendance fluctuate, we finally settled around Joe's kitchen table as a sextet: Joe, Ian, Sam, Adam, Andy and myself.

Joe was touting for players to join him in a new game, Western Legends. It received such a positive reaction that there was the chance of maxing out its six-player capacity. But it was decided that this would be foolish for a first play, so Sam, Adam and Andy went to peruse the games shelves while the rest of us got ready for some Wild West shenanigans. While Joe set up Ian and I swapped stories about our experiences on Red Dead Redemptions 1 and 2 and we found out we'd both dressed our avatars in nice clothes and spent hours playing poker. An option which, tantalisingly, was available in this board game.

The game itself is a collection of mini games, giving players the chance to gain Legendary Points for their success in poker or gold mining or killing bandits or spending money at the "theatre". Each player can good or bad and how well you do at this can also get you Legendary Points.

Two game characters clearly feeling the effects of a high wind

There's a strong sense of theme running through it and each player soon finds themselves creating their own western fable. For example, I was a Marshall, but a somewhat ineffective, comical one who spent more time at the poker table than hunting down criminals. Ian impressed us with his strategy of depositing gold at the bank and then immediately trying to rob the bank. Joe started by buying a big hat and then he hung around town until he robbed Ian of gold (he took half, rounded up, just like real bandits did, I expect).

Ian was first to hit the game ending score of 15 legendary points and in the final round (which saw both Ian and I race across Dixons Creek to spend money on enjoying the "cabaret") he saw off a late challenge from Joe.

Ian 26
Joe 19
Andrew 12

It was a fun game and I perhaps should have taken my peace keeping duties more seriously. Joe and Ian, however were much better at being rough tough rootin' tootin' outlaws.

On the other half of the table, the others had chosen Hab & Gut. It required a little ingenuity to decide how to best arrange the racks of cards but once they did, the whole thing went smoothly.

What with a new game in front of me I didn't pay Hab & Gut much attention, but even I couldn't miss Adam's good natured frustration at donating least to charity by a margin of only fifteen marks.

Sam 715
Andy 625
Adam OUT! He didn't even bother counting up how much he had.

After this I think we in America were barely starting, so they started another game, Tag City. Sam's artwork had an air of Keith Haring about it, so I made sure to take a snap.

Adam 66
Sam 51
Andrew 50

Sam said that Adam handed out a bit of a pasting. Perhaps he should have said "a bit of a painting." A ha ha. Oh, my sides.

Next up, they tried Wordsy, the game of word creation with limited means. Andy failed to come up with a word at all in round one but a bad round or two is of no consequence in this game and he was right on Sam's shoulder by the end.

Sam 99
Andy 94
Adam 84

Then, while perusing the rules they discovered that they had got one wrong. So, since it was already there in front of them, they played again.

Sam 121
Andy 115
Adam 100

Finally, we were all together again and a six player finale was in order. For Sale was suggested, but Texas Showdown won the day. So, Ian, Joe and I metaphorically put our stetsons and tassled suede jackets back on as we embarked on our second wild west themed game of the evening.

It was a game of cruel fate, as you might expect, but also of surprising discoveries. Namely, the fact that Joe has two automated card shufflers, one for the home and one for the studio. Astonishing. And well done to Ian for not opening his final beer so late in the day.

As for the game, Adam fell into an early slump, only to be replaced by Ian who picked up four then three tricks in consecutive rounds. Then, right at the end Joe picked up five tricks to propel himself into last.

As for the race for first, it was always Andy. There was one round (the penultimate one) when he shared the lead with Sam but then he went clear while Sam picked up a solitary trick allowing Andy to seal the win.

Andy 5
Sam 6
Andrew 8
Adam 9
Ian 10
Joe 12

And so we ended. And at a relatively sensible time (ie, not nearly midnight) too. Thanks to all. It was special.

A marble-ous evening

On the last Tuesday before Christmas, I turned up at Joe's ten minutes late and found that I was still only the second to arrive. Ian was already there, looking tired and hoping that beer would give him a second wind, while Andy showed up just as Joe was explaining the roll and write game of Twenty One to us. And so he joined us.

It's pretty basic. There are five rows of six dice on your score pad, different for each player, and each turn someone rolls six coloured dice and you have to fill in each dice with an equal or lower score, completing one row at a time. Bonuses are awarded for exact matches. That's the jist of it, anyway. The game ends when a player completes their last row, and when Ian decided to take fewer points to do just that, it left the rest of us desperately writing in whatever shitty scores were allowed. Poor old Joe scored just four points for his last row.

Ian 118
Andy 97
Andrew 94
Joe 87

Sam had arrived mid game and watched proceedings with interest. Next up was the main event. Joe suggested Colosseum as a big Christmas type of game, but in the end Calimala was chosen. It was new to Joe but with his years of Eurogaming behind him, we felt that shipping silk and contributing marble statues wouldn't pose a problem.

Ian shot off in the early stages, winning all four of the four opening scoring rounds, giving him a 12, 3, 2, 1, 0 lead. But then Andy's patient planning paid off as he started a mid game revival. Sam was the last of us to score any points at all but then made great leaps up the score track until he found his player mat devoid of resources or silk with the final round looming. He had to resort to choosing an action he couldn't complete, hoping for a bit of luck with the cards he'd pick up as compensation. He didn't get any.

Joe did fine for a first time, but he admitted that without time to go through the rules once, he struggled with any game. The mid-game discussion about the (almost imperceptible) difference between Greek and Swedish jazz probably distracted him too.

Andy 32
Ian 29
Sam 28
Joe 21
Andrew 18

Next up was a game that was new to all of us except Sam: Tag City. I was intrigued by its vague air of Jet Set Radio graffiti art. It's another roll and write game (or, as we hilariously put it, a Roland Rat game) but this time you are assigning dice to some tetris type shapes that all players can choose to fill up their grid. Points are awarded for completed rows, columns and areas.

We were pushing the boundaries of the game, playing with five players while the box suggests only up to four. We did this by utilising the fifth board supplied with the game and then using a die from Twenty One. Sheer anarchy. The game seemed fine, though. In fact, it seemed better suited to five players than Calimala did, with the previous game having a sense of lack of control over unfolding events.

Maybe Tag City had a sense of too much control since Andy had an attack of AP in one round as he arranged and rearranged the dice, unable to decide. "Are you min-maxing it?" asked Joe as Andy continued to prevaricate.

I enjoyed the game, but the lack of single square shapes made me paranoid that I'd leave a shape, row or column unfinishable. We made it to the end with no one accidentally outing themselves as Banksy and, after a series of recounts that saw first Ian then Sam briefly in first, it ended in a tie.

Ian 43
Sam 43
Andrew 35
Andy 33
Joe 21

Although the hour was late, we had enough in us for one last game: For Sale. Sam began by declaring that he never wins this game so he was going to do the opposite to his usual cagey start, opening the bidding with big bold six, with the promise of a 27 for the winner. I bid eight and eventually won. I was quite pleased with it until the next two rounds saw Sam pick up a 28 and Joe get a 29 for six coins each.

Joe went from tragedy to triumph in the cheque round, picking up a zero dollar cheque despite bidding a 19, but then he netted a $14k cheque with only a 10. Similarly, Sam was delighted in the final round when he discovered his 16 was, improbably, the highest card showing and he picked up a $13k cheque with it. Ian ended the game in his second draw of the evening, but this time at the wrong end of the score board.

Sam 65
Joe 61
Andy 53
Andrew 44
Ian 44

And so, the evening ended. There's no chance of a Tuesday meeting any time soon, what with Christmas and New year in the way and a possibility of a mid holiday games evening so I'll bid everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year now. Cheers, all.