Don't blame it on the sunshine

This week's GNN was a sparse affair, with neither the two planet system of Joe and Andrew present nor the orbiting moons of other, lesser-spotted gamers. It was so sparse we moved it to Wednesday to avoid it not happening at all, and come 7.30 there was just Martin, Ian and myself (Sam) sat at the table. Martin asked Stan if he was joining us, but he was happy wrestling a cushion by himself in the front room. I blame Fortnite.

After some brief rumination, and some scathing disdain from Martin over Lignum, we paradoxically started the evening with another tree-related game: Photosynthesis.

Rules-wise it's rather simple. Plant your seeds, grow them into saplings, then mature trees, then grand old redwood-style giants, before completing the cycle of life by degrading them into points. Each tree on the board potentially gets you light points, which are your currency to be spent doing the botanical doings you want to do. But there are a couple of catches - the first being that all your green-fingered activity doesn't actually get you any points - only ending a tree's life does, and doing so sacrifices your biggest light-earner. The other catch is that each tree casts shade - depending on what other trees are around you, and the position of the sun, even the biggest tree may collect no light points at all - something we all found to our chagrin at one point or another: no light points, no photosynthesis.

So whilst the rules are light, the implementation gave plenty of pause for thought, and Martin regularly cajoled Ian into taking his turn. I also cajoled Martin, but then it transpired it was my turn, so I had to cajole myself instead. Martin realised he'd spread his seed too much, and Ian and I managed to keep relatively straight faces.

After three cycles of the sun moving around the board, the game is over. My decision to recycle my big trees faster, but in the lower-return outside edges of the forest, worked out nicely. Martin blamed his defeat on buying "too many fucking seeds" and "this stupid tree".

Sam 80
Ian 70
Martin 69

The verdict was broadly positive, though we all agreed a second play would hopefully bring the play-time down, as we had sailed a little past 90 minutes.

Next up was the Shipwreck Arcana, the co-operative game of working out how to play the rules best so as to give out the most information. Andrew explained it better than I ever could here.

We began by forgetting some rules and restarted, but then sailed to victory in a reasonable degree of time, mostly thanks to Martin's unflappable cognitive power - for every card Ian and I scrutinised, he was computing at least three. In fact in the final round Martin did everything to identify Ian's fate, whilst I tried to figure out how to quieten the incessant buzzing of my fridge, which was becoming more interactive than Dirk. Turning it off and on again only worked for five minutes.

Shipwreck Arcana - we win! Mostly thanks to Martin.

My shipwreck arcana tiles, thematically scavenged from elsewhere

What next? The night was comparatively late, but not so late that we couldn't agree on a 45-minuter before finishing off with The Mind. With little debate, we settled on Azul, reasoning that we should mark its Spiel Des Jahres success with a play.

I began terribly, deciding to go for a twin strategy of columns and all-chewits. Neither worked - despite not being sat to the left of Martin, he still found ways to screw me over, and trying to fill the tricky bottom row early on in the rounds quickly proved a misguided notion. Martin and I both made a column quickly, but Martin had done it scoring more points, and placing two extra tiles. Ian bemoaned his "lack of a column" but was scoring more than me on the board, and held something of an ace up his sleeve.

In what proved to be the final round, both Martin and I were going for the black Axminster tiles and Ian picked two of them up, meaning not only did he trigger the end of the game, he'd also filled all his black tile spaces. Oh, and he got columns as well. Could he catch up with Martin? It couldn't have been closer!

Martin/Ian 69
Sam 46

A quick check of the rules left Martin appalled, as Ian won on the tie-breaker. I can't remember what it was now.

Ian 69
Martin 69
Sam 46

It could have been closer!

Ian's outrageous tile grab, round five

So, onto The Mind. By now the whisky and gin were flowing, and we were scattergun enough to crash on burn on level 2. Level two!! Pathetic. We dealt the cards again, and focused. This time things improved dramatically, with all of us seemingly reaching a point of near-telepathic communication. Ian seemed to be living two lives at the same time, staring intently at his cards with his id whilst his more trivial consciousness said aloud, apropos nothing, "Mmmmmmmm.... Thursday tomorrow" He remarked at one point that the buzzing of the fridge seemed to add to the tension. It did sound like some Aronofsky soundtrack.

We hit level 12 with two lives remaining. We lost a life on level 12. We completed level 12!

With a single life remaining, we turned to the Dark Mind - could we take our synchronicity and turn it into something bigger, greater as a sum than its component parts? No we could not. We crashed and burned on level one. Then we cheated and started again. Failed again. Then we cheated and started again. We did it! Then we failed on level 2, and by now even The Mind's greatest champions and most blatant cheaters had to take the hint.

Light Mind Level 12 - passed!
Dark Mind Level 1 - Failed!

A great night. Ian and Martin made their way home as I returned my attention to the fridge. Until next week!

That's literally Numberwang

Joe's house. Five gamers. Joe, Sam, Martin, Ian and me. Five is getting a reputation for being a difficult number to please, but there were no worries on that score tonight.

The first game was The Shipwreck Arcana, a co-op deduction game. Four slightly Tarot-y cards are played, each with a rule written on them. Each player has two tiles with a number between one and seven on them. The idea is to play one tile to a card and then the other players have to work out what your other number is. For example a rule might read "If your fates (ie, tiles) are a factor of two or three of each other, then play one here." Then if someone puts a three there, then their other number is either a one or a six.

It was quick to learn but tricky enough to slow us right down at times. Also, when discussing the meaning of a particular placement, Martin sometimes drew logical conclusions that I'm not sure even the person placing the tiles had thought of. Either way, we made no mistakes and brought the game to a swiftish end after getting seven right in a row.

Next up was Mü. This card game made its last appearance six and a half years ago and at the time we found its layers of rules pretty opaque. After such a long time since the last game, we found ourselves in exactly the same situation again.

The game is a trick taking game, but with two teams, which are decided by a bidding process during which you definitely don't want to be "on the hook". Once the Captain and Vice Captain (actually on different teams) are declared, they chose two trump suits, which might be numbers not suits. Then, when a round is completed, you consult the score chart (a sort of periodic table of even more numbers) to discover who succeeded and how much they won.

The winner is first to 500. We ended after two rounds. Criminally, I didn't take a note of the scores, but Martin won.

An intriguing experience, and one we need to try again soon if we're to get a grip on this game.

Next up was The House Of Borgias. This cross between Perudo and papal legacy was well received, as I recall, last time it was played, but hasn't been seen since. After a quick rule refresher, we fell back into our old skullduggering ways, bidding on poison, bribery, rumours, accusations, etc. The game is best remembered for the "Seven bribes" bid usually being followed by "for seven brubbers." Quality comedy, right there.

Ian was the only player to be correctly identified, so he scored no points at all. Meanwhile, Sam played a cautious game and his remaining four dice got his preferred cardinal an extra eight point bonus.

Sam 15
Martin 13
Joe 12
Andrew 10
Ian 0

At this point Sam left us at a sensible hour for sensible reasons. But the rest of us felt no rain on our parade, so we ploughed on.

By this time, there was no chance of a big game, so we stuck to lighter fare. Kribbeln was up next, using Joe's split-level dice arena which allowed us to properly specify which dice were frozen and which were still in play. Essential stuff.

At the end of the second round, Joe and I were level on 17 points. As we entered round three, I failed a roll but scored 34 points. I decided to put it in my Kribbeln, thinking that a guaranteed four points followed by a practically guaranteed no points was better than trying to be clever and scoring twice at the end.

A clever plan, but not enough to beat Joe who scored enough in round four that my dash for glory was for nought.

Joe 25
Andrew 23
Martin 18
Ian 16

After this we plumped for The Mind, the game that Sam had told us, barely able to believe it himself, that his wife had started playing as he was setting out this evening.

We played twice. Our first attempt seemed charmed at the start, as we cleared round one with the cards 2, 8, 9, 50. We lasted until round five where we fell to a combination of 66, 68, 69, 70. My (really quite drunken) notes state "fractionally out... like bad sex." It probably meant something at the time.

Then we tried again. We lost lives in the first two rounds and then in round three nobody moved. Eventually, Joe put down the lowest card - a 28.

We somehow got through round four without losing a life, which ended 93 (Ian), 96 (Martin), 99 (Ian), 100 (Martin). But eventually we fell on round eight, one round before the dark mind.

What a way to end a night. Big thanks to all concerned. And hope to see more of us next week.