Fruit flies like a banana

The omens for games night weren't good, with rain crashing down outside and in the house (mine; Sam's) an infestation of fruit flies having migrated from the hot bin in the garden. I spent some time chasing them around in a murderous rage, but there were simply too many. A knock on the door and the Easton massif - Gareth, Ian, Martin - arrived in good time to have the little bastards swarm around their drinks. The other ill portent were the crisps - pork and apple Sensations - which tasted, maybe not that surprisingly, gross. Although Gareth charitably ruminated that it was more about expectations, renaming them slow-cooked pork belly in a sweet apple sauce. We were still flicking flies away when Joe and the final Eastonite, Adam H, arrived, upon which time we set up Formula Motor Racing. 

We were mostly familiar with it's charms this time, but Martin went through the rules for Adam, who'd not played before. Cards are played to shuffle the cars about, in the hope you'll be at or near the front when the cards run out. You're often moving cars other than your own, but at least you can draft with an overtaking car, or play some kind of punitive measure on someone else. I got my cars to the front early on, but neither finished the race. Adam, who at one point had both his cars right at the back, managed a win at the death:

Adam H 10
Martin 7
Ian 6
Gareth 3

I still find it a bit arbitrary-feeling, but agree with Martin that the three-races suggestion in the rules makes sense - it would add some drama and escalation and a sense of shape. 

We split into two threes, with Ian, Gareth and Martin setting up Babylonia and Joe, Adam and I playing Tin Goose. Even though I'd played recently I found my mind a blank as I got everything out of the box and tried to summon some kind of zen calm, which was maybe partially successful. In the game players are competing airlines, bidding for more fleets in order to increase their presence on the map - the catch being that everyone is hampered by the chaotic, badly-run and accident prone ways of their airlines and need to improve them as the rounds pass, decades fly by and your starting fleets of Ford Trimotors eventually give way to the airbuses of the skies. 

It's only seven rounds, but the opacity of the relative values of everything - with players collectively deciding worth - meant took us a while - so long that at the other end of the table finished Babylonia before I could even get a picture of it, and started playing Azul. Martin won Babylonia rather convincingly as the others narrowly contested second place:

Martin 162
Gareth 118
Ian 117

And followed that with another victory in a tumultuous game of Azul:

Martin 68
Ian 66
Gareth 58

They even had time for a game of Spicy whilst we wrapped up our competition!

Gareth 33

Martin 19

Ian 17

"It turns out I can bullshit" said Gareth, pleased with his revenge after being stiffed on the final round of Azul. By this time we were wrapping up too, and Adam's domination of the International airways was proving not as clinically deadly as we'd feared. In the final count-up he was briefly second, but after we'd repaid our bonds, I snuck past him. Meanwhile Joe, who'd focused his efforts on serving the domestic interests at home, was King of the Airways:

Joe $308k

Sam $270k

Adam H $258k

It was time for So Clover, 

With six of us there was a possible 36 points to be had, and we got off to a flying start with Ian and my words being deducted in short order. Where we ran into trouble was Joe's clue Achilles being harpooned by the random card containing Arrow. Then we became convinced that Adam's clue of scabbard related to the words Sword Carton. It would have been nice if it were true - but it wasn't. Not unreasonably it was Sword and Draw. Despite these humps in the interpretive road, though we still managed a very decent 32/36.

With an early start, Gareth and Adam headed for home whilst the rest of us settled on a finisher of High Score, Reiner Knizia's Decathlon-esque game of rolling dice and hoping for the best. Seven rounds challenge you to score in numerous ways, with varying dice-rolling rules (freeze at least one; roll thrice; roll four times but it has to be all the dice etc) applied to various objectives. The bizarre humour of probabilities was evident when Joe managed to break the scoretrack by scoring 60, and then Martin - needing 4's - rolled every 4 there was to be had. 

proof

But Ian's slow and steady stream of second-place finishes in the rounds was enough to give him the game when he broke the habit to win the final round and push himself past Martin:

Ian 13

Martin 11

Joe/Sam 9 each

And that was that! Thanks to Joe and Adam for your patience on a fairly epic Tin Goose whilst the others played three games. I do like it, but appreciate it's a little longer than standard Tuesday night fare. 

Do you know what's Swat?

 I arrived at a little before 8 and found four gamers around Sam's kitchen table: Sam, Martin, Ian and Katy. They'd just finished a game of Spicy in which Katy didn't score until the final round and Ian didn't score at all.

Sam 35

Martin 33

Katy 13

Ian 0

Then we set up Cross Clues as the ideal game to play while waiting for Joe to arrive since he could just join in once he was here. He arrived mid game and initially misread Airport as Apricot but luckily that didn't hinder his clue giving.

We didn't do very well. I'm not sure but I think we got six wrong. 

Then we played Formula Motor Racing, an old Knizia game that showed it's age in the instructions that referred to the players as "gentlemen (and ladies)". It might be a Knizia game, but there’s player elimination, even though each player has two cars so if one spins out, you can be more cautious with the other.

Martin was the first to spin out and he did so in spectacular fashion. He used the spin out card in which the active player rolls a 12D die and the car in the position indicated by the die is out of the race. If the roll isn’t favourable, the player can roll again.

Martin rolled a 1. No good for him, since he was leading at the time so he rolled again. Martin rolled another 1. How we laughed. 

Katy also crashed and took Sam out with her but she recovered from that to win the race and the game.

Katy 10

Ian 7

Sam 6

Joe 2

Andrew 1

Martin 0

The game’s instructions suggest running seventeen races to recreate an entire Grand Prix. Maybe not.

Then we split into two. Martin, Katy and Joe played Tajuto during which Joe boasted about how good he was at pulling the pink and that “I’m known for my lucky drawers.” In among this Carry On Tajuto type humour, Joe seemed to be looking good for the win until the final count which saw Martin and Joe rejoicing in their shared victory.

Joe 19

Martin 19

Katy 11

Ian, Sam and I dug out Tin Goose again. Just like our last game, I was frugal again and I even passed on a chance to buy a plane when I thought the price had got out of hand. And this happened a fair amount as the auction prices were much higher than before.

Andrew 324

Sam 303

Ian 210

The two games ended at the same time, so we finished with Swat, a sort of cross between Ra and Snap. The aim of the game is to collect scoring sets while avoiding negative cards. The cards are dealt from the top of the deck by one player while the others wait until they’re happy with what’s on offer at which point they slap the player board in the centre of the table. Often this would be accompanied by cries from the other players, annoyed at having missed out on a promising haul. Sometimes it was accompanied by the cries of the player who claimed the cards only to find a last minute -4 fly card added to the pile.

Sam once slapped so slowly that Martin was able to get his hand under Sam’s to claim the cards. Ian managed to underslap (is that a word?) Katy twice, much to her frustration. However, Katy scored 41 in the first round and no one else got close.

Katy 75

Sam 65

Martin 55

Joe 52

Ian 52

Andrew 45

Then Katy, Ian and I went home while Martin, Sam and Joe finished on Sheepy Time. According to Sam, “Martin won, Joe in second and I was miles back in third.”

Thanks for the evening, guys. See you all soon.

This Goose is Raw

Saturday night, and Tin Goose sat on the table awaiting the attentions of Andrew and Ian: the history of American's airways playing out over several decades, as players expand their networks, build their fleets and rid their reputation of the bureaucracy of Regional Management. 

Tin Goose's interesting aspect is that as Fleets become available, everyone bids on them. As the end goal is to be the richest polluting airborne industrialist, the bids both tempt and appall you: the last thing you want to be in the game is cash-poor, as someone - probably Ian - will play an Event card that costs you money you don't have. 

Over seven rounds everyone takes a single turn. This consists of playing a card, either to auction off a fleet (active player bids last) or prompt the event on it. Then you've three actions to spend: pushing up your income, expanding your network, taking Labor chips (in case of a shitty event) or serving the financially alluring (but action-heavy: it costs two actions) international destinations:

Everyone begins with five shitty cards that hamper your airline: Regional Management, Rural Stops, Hazards and so on. If you add a fleet to your airline (as opposed to upgrading an existing fleet) you get to shed one of these cards and get two new planes. But upgrading is also tempting, because improving your planes gets your hazards and oil consumption down: events won't hit you quite as badly.

The planes come with hazards and oil consumption, as well as tiny descriptions: "This fleet is prone to metal fatigue" Ian announced at the start of an auction, perhaps trying to keep prices low. "This one's a bit crashy" said Andrew. Timing of events is everything, and Ian did it well, forcing me to take a bond at the worst moment. I'd managed to establish a lot of overseas connections, but having two bonds was not good news. Ian only had one, and Andrew none at all. In the end, his shrewd frugality made the difference:

Andrew $289
Ian $283
Sam $236

I think we all liked Tin Goose. Outside of a modicum income-track management, it's an accessible set of rules and a deceptively interactive and screwy game. 

It was still early so although Andrew had an early start he suggested Raj, and we played three rounds with winner's reward. Ian won the first convincingly, as Andrew's enormous set of tiles gave him the sum total of one point:

Then I took the second and third rounds as Andrew briefly flirted with negative points!

It ended with some measure of Goosian revenge:

Sam 80
Ian 46
Andrew 12

And we moved swiftly on to the lesser-seen Tsuro, as the second part of Andrew's one-two request of short games to finish. 

It was so short  - Ian won, with me second - we even had time for a three: Dragon's Breath, where players take turns as 'Daddy Dragon' melting the top ring in a tower of ice:

As the ice melts, everyone gets to predict what colour gems will fall on this particular turn, and the player with the most gems wins. Andrew proved Best Dragon by a considerable margin:

Andrew 24

Sam 17

Ian 14

And then with his 5am alarm call looming, Andrew bade us goodnight and headed out the door. Ian and I still had a little gaming in us, though, so I introduced him to Paolo Mori's (of Ethnos fame) CAESAR! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes. Terrible pun, but an excellent game as it turns out, as Caesar and Pompey battle for control of the empire.

The board is a map, and the short-term goal is to control regions of it; the winner is the first player to get all twelve control markers on the board. Turn by turn, players lay influence tokens on the borders of regions: there's a number either side that denotes the influence you're playing into both regions. As soon as all influence markers are played to a particular region, the player with the most influence there gets to place their control marker on it, and a control marker on the border of any adjacent regions they might already control. 

There's a twist in those yellow tokens, though: the player who plays the last token to a region grabs them, even if they don't win the contest there. These are kind of manipulation-manifesting moments, as you get extra turns, extra tokens to choose from, flip an opponent's control marker face-down or - best of all - the Senate tokens let you place extra control markers. 

Ian took the first game with a convincing win: it was so fast we had a rematch, which I - as Pompey - snuck a much tighter victory in a close-fought finale. We'd packed a lot of games into three hours, so although it was only 10.15 (on a Saturday!) we called it a night. Thanks chaps!