Hillmann Impish

I finally gave up the idea of playing games tonight when Andrew texted me to say he had no trousers. It's been that kind of weekend. Then suddenly, whilst reading The Greatest Gresham to the boys, the phone rang. It was an unusually perky Adam, saying he'd try and get Ian out of his sick bed and up to my house.

Ian was too ill to join us - get well soon mate - but Andrew, thanks to the wonder of radiators, jumped in the car and made a dash up the hill whilst Adam - with an alarming lack of bags under his eyes - and I played The Hive.

I say we played. Actually Adam played - I never got started, and if it was a boxing match my metaphorical coach would have thrown in the metaphorical towel well before the end. Maybe Adam metaphorically slipped on it and knocked himself out on the metaphorical corner post. We'll never know.

As it was my bee - after several desperate delays of the inevitable - succumbed.

Adam - beats Sam, comprehensively.
Sam - loses.

Andrew - perhaps his driving affected by the dampness of his trousers - still hadn't joined us, so I talked Adam through the simple delights of Black Fleet and we quickly had it set up and ready to go. Andrew walked in, sat down, and began sailing his ships like there was no tomorrow. Nautically speaking, there wasn't, as Adam broadsided and scuttled us.

I did manage to force it to a tie-break at least, but when the Creeping Custard already has enough money to flip his last card with a turn to go, and you have had your last turn and only have one doubloon left for a tie-breaker - in gaming parlance, you're fucked.

Adam - 5 cards flipped; 9 doubloons
Sam - 5 cards flipped; 1 doubloon
Andrew - 4 cards flipped.

With the bit now between his teeth Adam took us on at Castles of Mad King Ludwig. He had won this last time he played, but at that point I was just a rank amateur and hadn't fully understood the scoring. I felt with the practise Andrew and I had been putting in, at least one of us would give him a run for his money.

It looked like it'd be Andrew at first as he surged up the score track. But we caught him and as the game neared its end it was fairly close. Then, at the very end, it wasn't close at all:

Adam 115
Sam 101
Andrew 86

When is he going to have another baby, for chrissake?

						Points
Sam	2	2	1	1	2	8
Andrew	3	3	2	2	1	11
Ian	3	3	2	3	3	14
Andy	6	2	3	2	2	15
Adam	1	1	5	5	5	17
Katy	1	1	5	5	5	17
Matt	5	1	1	5	5	17
Steve	3	3	4	5	5	20
Joe	2	4	5	5	5	21
Anja	6	5	3	4	5	23

That was the end of the weekend, that was

After a game-heavy Friday and Saturday, I spent Sunday pottering around with the boys. We left the house just after ten and after a trundle around north Bristol, returned in the early afternoon. The boys watched Inspector Gadget and I wondered what kind of film I could make with that kind of budget and if it could possibly be worse.

After idly speculating what I could do with a free night (Sally is still away) - it hit me: Games! Usually the feeling arrives after my first coffee, but this time it was quite unexpected and late in the day after the previous indulgences. I didn't really expect any takers, but Ian bit, and we rounded off Novocon with an evening of two-player games tonight.

First out of the cupboard was Arkadia, which has never really hit the main drag of GNN but remains a firm favourite with myself and Andrew. Ian was new to it so there was a brief and possibly muddied rules exploration before we were off.

Those of you who've missed out on this, it's one of those games where a drab board (and little plastic men that could very easily be wooden discs) hides some neat and easy-to-learn mechanics. There's precious few options on your turn - either place a building or place workers, and then if you have a mind to, cash in a pennant in order to get more workers and cash in your seals, which you get by surrounding buildings on the board with other buildings. That admittedly idiotic sentence does contain the essence of the game - the key to it is maximising when you surround buildings (and of what colour) and what colour stones you add to the castle, as the colours in the castle dictate the value of your seals. Simple eh?

yeah, simple

I have made it sound very complicated I know but it's a game of very few rules and deceptive depth, like a well that's been made into a pond.

Sam 165
Ian 126

It was only just gone nine when we wound up Arkadia so we brought  out Quantum. I left Ian to set up whilst I went to put Joe on the potty. When I returned he'd gone for a very confrontational layout - though let's face it, the whole game is confrontational.

Space.

We began as is tradition by concentrating on our own shit, but before long Ian was blowing up my ships (and getting +2 dominance as reward) and I was combining some movement cards (1 free peaceful move, 1 free and possibly aggressive move of one space only) in order to go back at him. Aligned to my ability to knock a point off defence and attack rolls and after a series of skirmishes I claimed the win:

Sam 7 cubes
Ian 5 cubes

It wasn't even ten yet, so we broke out the whisky and what we thought was a quick game to finish off. We pondered a few options but I remembered how much I enjoyed Hive with Andrew on our sortie to York recently. The rules are simple - very chess like, with each piece having it's own movement abilities - and each player is trying to surround their opponents' bee in the hive of the title.

Early game

Ian entered the fray tentatively but whereas mine and Andrew's games tended to be the football equivalent of end-to-end cup ties (won by Andrew) this game took on the tense tactical air of a crucial golden-goal situation. Ian manoeuvred himself into a strong position and it was all I could do to keep blocking him, so he couldn't place the final piece to claim the win.

My bee is nearly surrounded, but my two ants 

and grasshopper (all on the left) are stopping 

Ian from completing the job.

But despite three or four desperate defences on my part, I eventually succumbed, having rather optimistically moved an Ant hoping to mount a counter-attack. Ian one-two-ed his way to a victory that was something of an epic, if a long time coming in his favour.

Ian: wins
Sam: loses

My bee is dead.

Whisky drunk and bees surrounded, we finally called time on Novocon 2014. Thanks everyone for making it a cracker!

Duff and Chuff

This week, seven gamers gathered together under rainy skies to forget about the struggles of life in favour of some entirely self-inflicted struggles of our own.

Adam and Hannah hosted, with Sam, me, Gonz, Martin and Joe in attendance. At first, while Adam and Hannah ate their supper, Sam and Martin began with a quick game of The Hive.

At first, Martin corrected Sam on a rule: that when placing a piece, it must be next to one of your own tiles. Some minutes later, another look at the rules clarified this: you cannot place a piece that touches an opponents piece. They started again. Then they saw the rule that you cannot move a piece until your fourth piece has been placed. The game was abandoned in despair. Still, it’s almost as if Sam has a new game! I wonder what it’s like.

We split into two groups. I had texted Joe earlier to ask him to bring Hab & Gut, and when it was suggested, I was pleased to see it get a favourable reaction. Adam, Gonz and Martin chose Kingdom Builder, and set off into the other room, while the rest of us got ready for a little Hab & Gut.

Hannah had never played before, so Joe explained the rules. We wheeled and dealed in the six commodities which, at the end of the first round of fluctuating prices, were almost in a line across the board just a few spaces further on from where they’d started.

Into the second round, and people started getting cagey about when to donate to the church. Whenever someone decided to donate, the other players would tut annoyed at having to play our dues. In the final count, Hannah donated the most, and I donated the third largest amount, allowing me to avoid the wrath of the church.

Andrew £625
Sam £550
Hannah £420
Joe OUT!

In the next room, they’d played one game of Kingdom Builder and had started on another game.

So we filled in the time with a round of Biblios. Much like Hab & Gut, a glut of church cards sent several dice values soaring, and while I did my best to bring them back down again, I wasn’t at all confident of my chances, having only really enough to secure the red dice with its lowly “2”.

As we totted up the scores, we saw how well Joe had played the game: he’d kept pushing up the value of the orange die so that no one else went for it. He picked it up with a score of just three. On the other hand, he did mistime his spending, which meant he was able to bid 13 gold on the last useless card. I got a stroke of luck when I picked up greens to go with my reds, giving me a winning score.

Andrew 5
Hannah 4 (wins on browns)
Sam 4 (wins on blues)
Joe 4

The Kingdom Builder people were strangely coy about sharing the results but the positions were:

Game one: Gonz, Adam, Martin
Game two: Martin, Gonz, Adam.

I think that’s right. I'm still waiting to get the results.

By now we were all together again, and Joe suggested a seven-player game of Take It Easy: the game where you really don’t take it easy at all. He had procured a second set, which meant that up to eight could play! Newbies had the rules explained to them, and we were off!

Take It Easy: the reaction of Martin (top right) indicates

that the tile he needs has not been drawn from the bag.

Being so simple and yet so agonising, it was probably more fun to listen to the agonised wails or curious squeaks of your opponents than it was to play the game. Suffice to say, a lot of those noises game from Gonz who sounded like he was slowly deflating as the game wore on. The rest of us took turns to display bullish confidence and angst-ridden despair. After three rounds, the final scores were

1. Sam 485
2= Joe 457
2= Martin 457
3. Adam 445
4. Andrew 432
5. Hannah 411
6. Gonz 326

What a great game! Sam, Gonz and I went off early, but the remaining four were discussing what to play next, so there’s still more to come for this report. (EDIT: Joe has updated us in the comments below)

With the scores from the last game of the evening in, the form table looks like...

						Points
Martin	1	2	1	3	2	9
Andrew	4	1	1	2	1	9
Sam	1	3	2	2	4	12
Adam	2	3	3	2	3	13
Joe	3	2	4	4	1	14
Steve	3	3	1	5	5	17
Gonz	6	1	2	5	5	19
Hannah	5	2	3	5	5	20
Anja	2	4	5	5	5	21

Martin leaps to the top on the best-most-recent-score rule.

And the blog title came from Sam’s description of his board during a round of Take It Easy. Something like that anyway. I can’t remember that either. I really need to start taking notes...

Mined over matter

The Gods smiled down on two weary gamers, as the planets aligned and the clouds parted and other things happened in the sky and Sam and I were able to fit two games evenings into two real evenings. And there’s the official GNN tomorrow! We are living the high life !

One Sunday we played a new game, The Hive. No photos from this day since my phone was across the room, plugged into the speakers, pretending to be a juke box. The Hive is a simple strategy game (or maybe it’s very complicated and I just haven’t twigged it yet) whereby the aim is to place and move your hexagonal pieces so that they surround your opponents queen bee.

The trick is to trap her long before that happens, since a piece cannot move if it breaks the hive. It’s intriguing, but it needs more table time. I’m sure there’s more to learn. The end is usually an anti-climax, since it can be clear who’s won several moves before it’s happened, without anything you can do about it.

Sam won three times, and then he won at 7 Wonders, with Dirk pushing me into third place! Is there anything more humiliating than coming third in a two-player game?

But that’s enough about Sunday. Again today, the two of us met up for more games! And again, there was a new game on the table. Sutter’s Mill has been sitting in Sam’s games cupboard almost longer than the Gold Rush lasted. Now was it’s chance to shine. Would it be 24 carat, or fool’s gold? I didn’t care, since my character had a cool hat and a shifty look. Good start.

Since it was our first play, any thought of strategy was secondary to working out what did what. The rules weren’t great, with large chunks repeated throughout. But the game is clear enough, once you’ve worked out what “conducting business” means. It means getting gold according to how buildings you have. You get buildings by combining men and cards in order to have the most influence in them.

And that’s how Sam played it: he owned buildings, even if they weren’t actually useful at the time, in order to get gold for buildings. I owned buildings which got bonuses for mining gold at a particular stage in the game.

Then, after mining for gold, the trick is to get your meeples and cards out of town as much as possible. Preferably leaving a low-valued card and one lonely meeple in town once the vein of gold has been exhausted and the game ends. Anything left in town counts against you. Gold and cards you managed to save from town get you points. We counted up, and despite the rules assuring us that ties were rare, it couldn’t have been closer.

Andrew 116
Sam 115

Sam had more gold, but I got all my cards out in time. An interesting game. Perhaps better with three, which would make it harder to keep track of what your opponent is up to.

After this, I requested Samurai, which doesn’t get enough love here in GNN. This time we played strictly according to the rules, which made the game drier with far fewer opportunities to parachute in plenty of troops at once (not that Edo-period Japan had invented the parachute. Or perhaps they had, but they certainly hadn’t invented the aeroplane, making parachutes somewhat redundant).

So we patiently built up our forces, and a lot of pieces were taken off the board as many battles ended in a draw, but Sam was a clear winner.

And so we finished the game and the evening. And there’s more to come tomorrow!