Some kind of Bala

A summer games weekend. On Friday night Ian and Katy were first to arrive, and after some uncertain naming hesitation on my part - Gambala? Gambola? - loosely inspired by Shambala, which was the reason my house was empty in the first place, Katy insisted it would be Sambala, in honour of me - or at least my email pushiness. I overcame my initial reluctance to use it as excuse for my excesses as the evening progressed - an evening that began with 5 Towers. 

This was new to both Katy and Ian but it's a simple game: we're all building the titular towers and each round we bid on how many cards we'll take to do so, adding them in descending numerical order. You can 'tear down' a previous card, but doing so costs points. Katy kept her powder dry here as Ian and I built, and cleaned up thanks to Ian's shortage of tower tops that increase your score. 

Katy 31
Sam 23
Ian 21

Adam arrived in time to watch the count-up and was intrigued to try it, but we realised with an hour until Anja got here we could do something chunkier, and settled on The Quest for El Dorado, mixing in some of the expansion options I picked up on a recent jaunt to Norway. We added Dangers (though this morning I realise I forgot one of the boards for it) - which are the same as normal spots except you can't end your turn on them - and some crocodiles, which can only be navigated with an exact-number card (the suit doesn't matter) and the Muisca, a local tribe who'll help you, but potentially opponents as well, for reasons I won't explain here as it never happened in the game. 

Adam warned everyone that in the last game I blocked him from card-shedding spots and I began with a similar strategy, trapping Katy behind a mountain as everyone was slightly appalled at me. "It's Sambala" I said. She and I lagged behind and constructed decks as Ian and Adam journeyed forward and Adam went back and forth between a dangerous valley so much that he got his deck down to just four cards. "But three of them are shit" he said. We didn't believe him but it turned out to be true: he was caught and overhauled. I sailed off into a healthy lead with a streamlined seven cards, and felt optimistic that El Dorado was calling my name. But then I stalled at a watery barrier and was caught by everyone. 

It was suddenly tense. Adam removed the barrier but blocked one way. I went the other but for two turns running didn't draw the cards I needed. Katy and Ian were blocked by the pair of us - but not for long, because suddenly Adam - now with some powerful cards - sped off to the end and won. Katy wanted to play for second place until she realised she couldn't get to El Dorado, but I could.

Adam wins
Sam sort of second

Anja still hadn't arrived so we set about playing Poison, still with its Joe-infused Dwarves of the Twilight Galaxy box cover. Katy didn't remember (or know?) the rules, but insisted on not learning them and that she'd get it as we went. This made for a slightly staccato game as apparently brewing poison is not as simple as it sounds. 

Unless you're Adam. We only played one round but he squeaked a narrow win over Quiet Ian, who had gone about his business attracting less opprobrium. 

Adam 2

Ian 3

Katy 8

Sam 17

We stopped after the single round because Anja was now here! After a brief catch-up we returned to business with co-operative Wavelength, with my first spectrum being good superpower/bad superpower. I felt my clue of being able to nap at a moment's notice was not a bad guide, but Katy had to be talked down by the others from seeing it on a par with flying, invisibility and time-travel. We hauled in a three points, but then went off the rails somewhat with our next few clues - we undervalued Ian's A4 writing pad and Anja's perception of country music - only to stage a late-game recovery and come oh-so-close with 13 points - two shy of the official victory condition. 

Not that it matters, as Katy rightly pointed out. Next up was Fun Facts, new to Anja but an easy teach and not a million miles from Wavelength. It transpired that desires to go to space was split along gender lines, with Anja and Katy willing to spend zero pounds on getting there and the boys more sympathetic, although Ian thought he'd get bored and Adam thought he'd get sick. I was more keen: I liked the idea of zero gravity and peeing in my pants.

We didn't do too badly, although the rulebook was hardly effusive about our score of 26. Next up was the little-recently-seen Perudo! What a cracker this game is. 

Adam and Anja took the early hits as Anja kept calling dudo, with mixed results. She was first out, followed by her neighbourly nemesis, as Katy insisted everyone target me as I still had my full complement of dice. It sort of worked: Ian fell next leaving Katy and I on a single die each. Despite her insistence that I had a huge advantage, I've been here before: like poker, my game is only solid until a showdown and then it disintegrates. 

1 Katy wins

2 Sam

3 Ian

4 Adam 

5 Anja

There are no pictures of So Clover, because Katy was so appalled at the outcome of her clover that she flipped it face down. We hadn't figured out what she'd meant with the clue shit, and it's now lost to memory. Mine anyway. Comments are available. 

So Clover: 22/30

There were some good clues, but I've forgotten them too. I was slightly drunk and reading Adam's clue of enrobed as enro-bed for some reason set me off, so while everyone else solved his clover - 6 points! - I had my head on the table. Possibly informed by this, but hopefully the late hour, Ian and Adam took their leave and the remaining trio played Misfits. 

Several collapses later, I took the win and Friday was done. 

On Saturday the games began a little before midday, as Katy and I had a Clans of Caledonia rematch. She had extra order-fulfilment options, I knew how to sail. The last time we played this Katy obliterated me, but on this occasion she struggled to get going and told me that she hated the game in rounds 2 through 5. It was closer than we thought though, and whilst I won my score did not eclipse Katy's in the last game.  

We moved on to another medium-euro: Rajas of the Ganges. 

Here there were very divergent tactics: I built markets and Katy buildings. Buildings race you around the track faster than markets - but they're a score-once-and-done option. Without any trade in her province Katy had no incentive to score markets, and so I took another win here - again, a close one though. 

Katy's province: lacks cornershops

By this time we'd eaten lunch and other gamers were looming. We bashed out a year of Cozy Stickerville as we waited: a game you famously cannot lose, as it mostly consists of putting stickers on the board and regretting your decisions. 

As we ended a mostly-fallow year of having not enough wood to do anything, Anja, Steve, Lennon and Louie all arrived, and hot on their heels Pete, Laura and Ryker. 

We split into two groups. I joined the Dalton-Dales for Forbidden Desert and the remaining quartet began playing The Mind, with hilarious results. I think in the time we set up and reminded me of the rules they'd failed on level 1 three times, then triumphed and called it a win.

Meanwhile in the desert I was being reminded of how much sand there was. 

So much in fact that I took it upon myself to spend most of my turns removing it, as it bothered me. Lennon did lots of excavating to find things, Steve employed his magical powers of movement and Anja had a knack of finding tonnes of equipment. Louie generously sacrificed a lot of actions to stop Storm cards being drawn and basically save our asses. Despite this, it didn't help: we ran out of sand and lost. 

Meantime the others had played Magical Athlete, which was won by Ryker on his GNN debut...

And they'd also played Misfits, the winner of which I totally missed as I was buried in a dune at the time. I heard a big crash at one stage though, and there were the usual alarms about elbows on the table.

We now lost Katy to Weekend Plans and shuffled ourselves into a big group for a revisit to Louie's Game Off, last seen when Martin harrowingly sang Happy Birthday to Steve on a games weekend. 

In this game you go around the table and roll dice to see who you challenge on your turn, then choose what sort of challenge it'll be. Louie and I had to moonwalk, and Lennon saw me off easily in the slowest-press-up face-off. Anja and Lennon both had to sing their highest pitch, and she lost to Louie in the rhyme-off of words that sound like 'right'. The kids dominated here: Louie won with the 5 cards needed to end the game, Lennon runner-up with 4. Whilst Pete and Steve also scored, Anja and I were left with nothing but a vestige of our Game Off worthlessness. SAD. 

Lennon and Louie had a game of Crokinole but decided one round was enough. I'm not sure who won.

Then Lennon, Pete and I began a game of Ticket to Ride: Berlin but there was now an interval for fish and chips, of which there are no pictures. Thanks to Steve for making the run to the chippy (and let me know what I owe!). After the meal Anja thrashed Steve at Trickarious whilst Pete took a narrow win in Berlin. 

There was time for one last family game before the curtain fell, so we played In Vino Morte. Twice actually. Anja ousted Steve in the final round in game one, but in game two Lennon poisoned everyone but himself! I've never seen that before. Extra points for the face of an arch poisoner too. 

Steve now ran the family back to the house whilst Pete and I fretted about what he might like to play, going around the houses circa games night 2012 until we realised we all liked Root. So we set it up and happily his eyes lit up on seeing it. 

He was the industrious Marquis, Pete the expansionist Eyrie and I the sneaky Woodland Alliance. We all forgot some minor elements: Steve the hand limit and I a faction specific thing. Pete managed to forget he was charismatic, which Steve pointed out takes some special kind of charisma. But Steve's eyes, so bright before, were increasingly dark as I dicked everyone over with my sneaky ways. 

As is the way with Root, knowing someone is an asshole and stopping them are two different things. Probably my more recent experiences told - Steve hadn't played in years. 

Sam 30

Pete 16

Steve 12

Steve took revenge in The Quest for El Dorado, which we were surprised to learn he had never played before. No expansions then, just a lot of card shedding: early for me, later for the others. I felt I'd put myself into a good position and reached El Dorado first - but Steve's collection of cave tokens saw him sashay in behind me, and his collection of barriers trounced my one.

1 Steve - Indiana Jones

2 Sam - Small Round

3 Pete - Rene Belloq

After all the excitement of the day I was fading a bit but we squeezed in one last dice-chucker in Pickomino. 

I had just finished telling them about my brother-in-law taking a worm and then rolling seven ones when Steve did something remarkably similar. There's more to it than that but I'm not sure the anecdote will survive the transition to print. He won this too: my huge early lead collapsed into nothing and Pete couldn't get what he needed to deprive Steve of another victory. 

Steve 6

Pete 3

Sam 0

Sunday arrived, bright but not particularly early. Pete was still asleep in the front room when I went out for food supplies, but joined me shortly after my return. We had coffee and a chat and then thought what the hell, we'd play a game. This was Babylonia. 

It's not a game that tells much of a story but my two-player training versus Martin possibly helped here as I took a decent victory. 

Sam 125

Pete 85

We pottered a bit and ate lunch before gamers arrived: Jo was first, and we swiftly set up a trick-taking game called Power Vacuum, where we are trying to be top appliance. 

It was bananas: each trick the winner can take a point or reserve a card for the next round. More alluring is playing the lowest value card, where you can manipulate the energy supply to the appliance of your choice, or away from an appliance of your choice, or maybe both: each player has an area they score because it's themselves, but also bids you can make about which appliances will be most/least energetic. Despite the appliance theme, you also build statues of yourselves. I'm never going to look at the Nutribullet the same way again. 

We didn't manage a whole game but Pete was leading Jo 28-20 and I was back on 17 when Katy arrived, and we switched to another tricktaker Jo had brought with them: Daytime Minutes. 

Back in the world of sentient beings, we're now avid phone users in the early 2000s struggling to manage our minutes. I found this easier to parse than Power Vacuum but I'm not sure I can explain it coherently: each card has a time value and the winner takes all the cards of the led suit. Each round has a maximum time anyone can have and you want to not go bust, and also have not spent the least time: in either case, you lose one of your precious SIM cards. 

Also, there's potentially (in fact, always in our game) two suits in each trick, so with it two winners. Although you don't always want to win, obviously, because Minutes.

Adam H arrived in time for the finale, as Jo and Pete both went bust and Katy, who still had two SIMs, took a win. It's a great game, allowing room for lots of jokes about phone calls to your mum. Katy did one of these and then realised she had to call her mum later. 

Now a five, we introduced Jo to dnup, the spiritual sister of Scout. 

It was a funny game, with a lot of enforced busts and the odd reluctant rotation. I'd like to say my convincing win was because I know what I'm doing, but I think we all know better.

Sam 4

Adam 1

Everyone else 0

Katy demanded Misfits next. We mentioned to Jo that we didn't play the official rule of 'if half the pieces fall, you must take the entire tower' and inevitably bumped into two situations where it suddenly made sense.

By Misfits standards it was a bit of an epic: probably well over half an hour, and Katy ran out of time and had to leave, graciously taking the shitty base for herself before she did so. She wanted to claim a win - she had fewest blocks - but we wanted to keep playing.

As I write now I can't actually remember who won though, although my sources tell me it was definitely Pete (sorry Katy). Mel was now imminent and Adam suggested she would love Steam Power, so we set up and talked both she and Jo - and me, to some extent - through Wallace's Light Railways. (at this point Blogger's labelling runs out of space)

My recollection of the game is one of mild bamboozlement: I do find it - as I repeatedly told everyone (sorry) a very hard game to read, and forgetting a key connections rule meant I inadvertently cheated as well. Thankfully I wasn't in contention though. It looked very much like it might be Pete, who seemed to be scoring contracts almost every turn from about 20 minutes into the game. 

But one should never write off Adam in these scenarios, and when Pete triggered the end game the one turn the Creeping Custard still had in him was enough to hoist him to victory! At least that's what I thought. As it turned out I was simply innumerate (and used to Adam winning). 

Pete 39

Adam and Jo 33 each

Mel 26

Sam 22

Pete had one more game in him and after a surprisingly short debate we settled on The Shipwreck Arcana, something I last played probably nine years ago and had mixed up with Bemused I think. Fortunately it's Jo's favourite game and they knew it inside out, nursing us through the baffling confection of possibilities, often as much about choices you don't make as ones you do. 

We are collectively trying to get seven right answers, the question being a slightly Bilbosque what have I got in my pockets. Although we work together, the active player must keep schtum as everyone tries to figure out as much as they can about a numbered tile in their hand, by examining what tile they aren't hiding - and where it is. The discarded tile goes next to a clue, which hopefully leads everyone to identify what you're hiding.

That's a very loose description anyway. Guessing wrong - or having the card 'fade away' by having too many tiles beside it - causes Despair: reach seven despair and you instantly lose. 

This was fun: we won but not without help: we did a relatively easy setting and had some considerable luck when my first hand was the same as Adam's, so I just copied what he did. It's very clever. 

We now lost Pete and Mel and were down to the last game of the night - and the weekend. I mentioned Hanami and Adam and Jo were both amenable, so we started out on the game that should surely be called Picnics for Dicks, as we serially shenaniganed and caused even the usually-zen Jo to cry out in despair several times.

I thought if Adam had only won lamps, I might have an outside shout of beating him on the tie-breaker. But he didn't and I wouldn't have. A convincing victory for Mr H, vanquishing the ghost of Steam Power. 

Adam 2

Jo 1

Sam 0

And finally, after around twenty-three weekend hours of gaming, your insert-festival-name-of-choice-bala was over. What a lovely weekend, thank you everyone!

For Goodness' Saké

Like a rare planetary alignment, every year or so four increasingly aging board gamers meet to catch up and share news, ancient in-jokes and some dubious double-entendres.

I arrived at about 1.30, and Sam told me that Chris and Paul were running late, still picking their way through Bristol’s bank holiday traffic. We drank coffee and chatted while I idly looked at the packaging for Tokkuri Taking, a game that would be our first once we were all here.

The packaging promises a bacchanial party of sake with dinosaurs. In practice, we were playing cards to either represent a clay bottle full of sake (the tokkuri) or the amount of sake each player will drink.

You have to play cards which will empty a (or many) tokkuri(s) exactly. If you achieve this, you flip the tokkuri card, action any text that you may see and keep it as a point. Unless it is a Dummy card, in which case the card is removed from the game and everyone else chuckles at your bad luck.

In fact, the revelation of a dummy card remained funny until the end of the game. It was a nice little game but, as Chris pointed out, where were the dinosaurs?

Sam 20

Chris 13

Paul 4

Andrew 0

After this game, to commemorate the day, Chris took a selfie of the four of us and unfortunately demonstrated how age turns technology into a mystery. We all posed and smiled and, instead of taking a photo, Chris promptly turned his phone off.

Never mind, we got there in the end.

Then we chose our next game. At least, me, Sam and Paul did. Chris stayed at the kitchen table, declaring himself too tired to make a decision. And so we played Tower Up, in which we were rampant civil engineers/town planners, intent on placing our roofs across city skyscrapers. Each of us had a player board with four scoring tracks in white, black, brown and grey which gave us the first childish sniggers as we spoke about “one up the brown” or a lack of “brown movement.”

Sam did impress mid-game with one move that got him three bonuses at once, but Chris’ slew of prominent yellow domes across the city pushed him into first place.

Chris 53

Andrew 50

Sam 46

Paul 40

Next up was Azul. I explained the rules to Paul and we were off. Sam kept picking up the first player token for minus points, insisting that he liked going first. Paul started slowly, with disparate tiles on his board, but managed to weave them all together with a final round that scored over 20 points by itself.

Paul 76

Sam 72

Andrew 70

Chris 66

We discussed food and, since Sam’s son Joe was going to get pizza for him and his friends, it made sense for him to get some pizza for us at the same time. That plan didn’t go down well and not even the promise of a side salad could persuade Joe.

Then we played Scout. A sort of trick taking game with a really light Circus theme. Not as tenuous as dinosaurs drinking sake, but still very tangential. I tried to bring the circus motif into play: when I put down a pair of tens I introduced it as “Lisa and Rebecca with their two cannons” but it didn’t really catch on.

Chris 38

Paul 34

Andrew 27

Sam 18

Next up was Misfits. Chris started with a cylinder placed upright. Then he sat back and smirked. We carefully placed piece after impossible piece until the entire edifice collapsed, leading Sam to declare “every c*nting piece!” as he ruefully swept the debris into his reserve.

We played twice and Chris won both times. After Chris’ second win, we kept playing Speed Misfits for second place, with Chris counting down the time limit in a vague German accent. I placed second.

After this we played Ito - the pocket version of Wavelength where everyone gets to make a guess. We didn’t do too well, with some pretty close calls. 

“Places to have a secret lair” did okay, with some nice distance between our guesses but in the category Imaginary Worlds to Visit we failed to differentiate the two-point gap between The Planet of Stale Farts and Pubic Hair World.

Following this we gave up on pizza and decide to get curry delivered. After that was ordered, we played Pina Coladice. Yahtzee mixed with Noughts And Crosses. Each square of a 4x4 grid has a target to achieve with five dice rolled three times. Place your meeple (if there’s still room) and four in a row will instantly win the game.

It was okay. I felt a bit like I was watching myself play, but there’s a certain amount of strategy as first Paul then Sam found their paths to glory blocked by other players taking the spaces they needed. But in the end, Chris won with four in a row.

With the curry imminent we played a couple of quick games of Toy Battle. A very simple war game with basic mechanics but a nicely balanced range of soldiers at your disposal. Sam beat Paul on a tie-breaker and Chris beat me outright, having successfully stormed my HQ.

Next we broke for food and then I chose the next game - my last of the day.

It was Quest for El Dorado. Paul’s first game, and he got a rules explanation from, as I recall, most of us at one point or another. It was pretty close throughout, apart from the usual early stages of one playing hanging back for tokens (Sam) while another sped off into the jungle (Chris). But Chris was no amatuer just pegging it and hoping for the best. He neatly balanced his deck and picked up tokens as he went. An purchase of the Captain just as he reached the watery fifth hex was probably pivotal.

I tried to think like Adam by buying a Travel Log (or Travelodge, as Paul called it) to whittle away the flab from my hand, but when I appeared I really didn’t know what to do with it. Nevertheless I actually thought I had a chance until quite late on. False hope.

Chris 1st to arrive, wins tie breaker

Sam, arrived same turn

Paul, only a few spaces short

Andrew, at least I reached the final hex.

*                *                *

mysterious change of narrator

*                *                *

Sam here. The hour was around 9pm, I think, when Andrew left us, and we had a couple more hours of ludological frolics ahead of us. We began them with Rebirth, the game of cathedral and castle construction in post-apocalyptic Scotland. I can't help thinking that if all the efforts going into these rebuilding games went into avoiding an apocalypse in the first place, maybe these great designer minds could come up with something. But anyway. This was new to the ever-patient Paul, so I went through the fortuitously-simple rules and away we went, brick by brick. 

Whilst I set about cathedralling like some kind of Ken Follet enthusiast and Paul remarked that he kept pulling the same type of tile, Chris sped off into a chunky lead, passing 100 points way before we did and enjoying saying the word 'dirigible' in celebration. But his momentum slowed in the final act, and my haul of highland castles and completed objectives got me a vanishingly rare win - by a single point! Chris threw his cards on the table in disgust. 

Sam - can't remember

Chris - can't remember -1

Paul - a few points further back

We celebrated/drowned our sorrows in the Milk Tray chocolates Chris had brought with him. There was no flavour reference so I tried one at random, which turned out to be a hazelnut whirl. I enjoyed it so much I had another, before discovering they were everyone's favourite, including Jacquie, who wasn't even here, but added to the chocolatey shame. Apologies all. 

We played Fantasy Realms next, and any crowing I might have been tempted to do in my Rebirth triumph stuck in my throat as I proved abysmally bad at realming fantasies. 

The game is super-simple: you have a hand of cards that score in different ways, and on your turn you pick up a new card and discard one to the table. You can pick up either from the table, or the top of the deck, but the catch is top-decking hastens the end of the game, which happens when a tenth card is added to the communal cards. Chris more than doubled my score, I think it was something like

Chris 190?

Paul 140?

Sam 80

I poured myself another gin as Paul asked me if I was getting tired. "He's got to wait up for his kids!" Chris pointed out, as if we needed an excuse to keep gaming. Little Tavern was next. 

Chris started and immediately parked an elf at his table. I advised him this was maybe not the best move, because elves in this game are racists and only like sitting with other elves. Chris nodded that he understood and immediately picked up three more elves to score 16 points in the first round. In the second I gave him a face-down romantic and he paired it with another face-up to win! Stupid game. 

We finished off with So Clover, of course, but whether it was the marathon games, the gin, the chocolate, the red herrings or the late hour, did appallingly badly with a 3-2-4 haul giving us 9 points from a possible 18! 

By this time, Joe and his pals were home and Stan was on his way back too. It had been ten hours of gaming and with midnight not too far off, we elected to end it there. Thanks all! Sorry about my foul-mouthed breakdown in Misfits.