A Doggy Dog World

 Late again for games, I was about to knock on Joe’s front door when I heard laughter coming from nearby. Checking my surroundings, I noticed that the set of stone steps leading down to a little below-pavement quadrant was no longer blocked and that the quadrant now hosted some welcoming doors that lead  inside. I followed the sound of happiness into Joe’s new open-plan kitchen/lounge area. An impressive new gaming arena with a surprising lack of games which were still in Joe’s studio.

But we had enough games to be getting on with. When I arrived, Sam, Joe and Katy had already played Spicy, which Joe had won, with Sam in second. I also soon learn that we are to be welcoming a couple of newcomers from Sam’s work, Dan and Mikey.

Before they arrived, we played a game of Take The A Chord, since to leave it any longer meant we’d have to learn the game from scratch. We pretty much had to do so, anyway, as the finer details of key changes and improvising eluded us at first. Eventually we got into it, and I won by getting three tricks in each round. Mr Consistency, they call me. 

Andrew 90

Sam 75

Katy 65

Joe 30

Then Mikey arrived and, after introductions, we all played Troika. Joe tried to play mean (“It’s a doggy dog world,” he said, unless I heard wrong) while Katy insisted you had to think for yourself. Joe won this argument, but only after a tie-breaker.

Joe 3

Katy 2

Sam 1

Andrew 0

Mikey -1

Then while we waiting for Dan to arrive we grilled Mikey on his board gaming knowledge. I hope we didn’t seem too interrogatorial, but he acquitted himself well as he name checked a few GNN favourites. 

When Dan arrived the six of us split into teams for Team Play. It’s a pretty rule-light game so Dan and Mikey were up to speed before too long. In fact, Mikey was able to complete a task in his first turn and then so did Dan. As the game wore on, me and Dan were in a comfortable lead and I thought Mikey and Katy were in second with four-task lightweights Joe and Sam in last place. 

But we were in first because, after starting with some high-scoring tasks, I decided to dash to eight tasks by getting a few two-pointers out of the way. When we counted up, my hunch was right, but it was much closer than I’d imagined as Sam and Joe ended with only five tricks but each one was a peach.

Dan and Andrew 26

Joe and Sam 25

Katy and Mikey 19

And with that Katy and I dashed off home, leaving the others to… chat I suppose. Thanks all. See you next Tuesday!

Flippedy Doo Dah

 The regular GNN meet continued in its perambulations around Bristol, this time landing in my flat. There were only three of us, since others seemed more keen on the Euro 2020 semi final, but my table cannot comfortably accommodate lots of people so it was probably for the best.

First, with Katy en route, Sam and I dusted off vague memories and played The Pyramid's Deadline, a roll and build game which sees the players racing to build the biggest mausoleum before the pharaoh snuffs it. I'm sure we forgot a few rules, despite reading through them. Not to worry, Sam won easily.

Sam scored lots

Andrew scored not lots

Katy turned up and we played another Japanese game Remember Our Trip. This curious game involves players tiles onto their player board, trying to match the shape and colour of various buildings. Once they have achieved that, the shape scores PLUS that building is added to a communal player board that represents the "real" memories (assuming that those squares haven't already been claimed by someone else's recollection).

It was interesting. I did keep wanting to slip into Hellfire Club mode and reminisce at length about our trip to Kyoto, but that's not what the game is about. It’s fun and a little mean as players try to remember things about the same part of the board first.

Sam 46

Andrew 44

Katy 30

Next up we broke out good old Divinare, the game of psychic ability. After a very brief rules refresher, we got down to business for a truncated three round game (because I wanted to play Troika). Sam sped off into an early lead, crediting his success to a lack of understanding of any strategy. Meanwhile Katy found her earlier optimism to be completely misplaced and as we began the final round, she had a grand total of minus one points. She did better in that final round, going from dismal last to respectable last.

Andrew 14

Sam 12

Katy 7

Finally, we played Troika, a token flipping set collecting game of space exploration. Katy quickly got into the swing of things and ended round one with 19 points. You can imagine her disappointment when she discovered that winning a round only gets you two points. Katy did need regular prompting to flip a tile first. These prompts became increasingly long and absurd (ie, "flippiddy dippidy!") as she . That didn't stop her though and Katy finally won a game, much to her relief since that meant her evening wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Katy 4

Sam 3

Andrew 2

And so that was that for another week. Next week will have less football to distract people, but maybe more virus to put people off. We shall see.

No Peking

This week's GNN started with trauma. I arrived to find Joe receiving some first aid due to a nasty burn on the back of his hand caused by scalding hot oil and water. Ouch. He played through the pain, though, with his hand smothered in ointment, wrapped in clingfilm and then topped off with a single glove.

As for the games night, we were six in number: Joe, Ian, Martin, Sam, Adam and me. Martin had brought Ticket To Ride Asia, the team version of Alan R Moon's cash cow. I wasn't keen at first, having only recently played Ticket To Ride New York but the general consensus was favourable, so it was chosen.

The teams were Ian and Sam versus Martin and Joe versus Adam and me. The rules do not allow collaboration between the two players, only a little 'light chat' while you play. This rule was somewhat stretched when Martin pointedly asked Joe if a card he had just picked up was going into the communal card between them.

Ian and Sam raced into an early lead after Ian completed a six link route. And he also brought along  thematically appropriate crisps, too. He looked like a strong contender. Adam refused to give any information regarding what he wanted to his opponents (or indeed, to me) by almost always choosing two face down cards from the deck.

Ian and Sam's lead was slowly whittled away and there was a lovely moment when we were all on 49 points. If only it could have stayed that way as Martin and Joe's gambling on route tickets paid off.

Martin checks the scores with lightning speed while Joe's

single white glove shines in the dark.

Joe and Martin 207
Adam and Andrew 130
Ian and Sam 124

Then we split into two groups. Sam, Ian and Martin played Dragon Castle.

Sam 40
Ian 38
Martin 37

Meanwhile, Joe, Adam and I chose Twenty One after I said I was in the mood for a roll and write game. What a fool I was. Twenty One is a game where everyone uses the same dice values to mark off dice on their differing score sheets. Ideally, you want to match exact values of the dice with the ones on the sheet. Unfortunately, my attempt at rerolling my dice because they were beneficial to Joe usually ended in them being even more beneficial to Joe.

Joe 106
Adam 94
Andrew 82

After this, we were back together as a six. Ian was tempted to stay for one more game with For Sale. In the property round, I spent all my money, Ian played it cagey at first before picking up the 30 for just 10 chips. Then in the cheque round, Joe was sunk by a zero dollar cheque when he'd bid a 15 on it. He never recovered. Sam, though, picked up his third For Sale win in a row!

Sam 50
Adam 47
Martin 46
Ian 45
Andrew 42
Joe 37

After this Ian and Adam set off home while the remaining four played Troika. It's such a simple game that Joe and Martin had no difficulties with it and it seems like a winning strategy came to them quite easily, too.

Martin 3
Sam 2
Joe 2
Andrew -1

And that was that. Thanks to Joe for hosting through the pain (or at least, some discomfort) and well done to everyone for just being you.

Troika's Company

Saturday, and Andrew and Ian were hardy enough to make the trip to my house for a bit of gaming. Not only that, they were hardy enough to learn no less than three new games!

Before they arrived, Sally, Stan, Joe and I all performed an impressive feat of fireworks in Hanabi, scoring 20 points with minimal (and inadvertent) cheating. I say minimal: we did give our clues in a very dramatic play/don't play manner, which might be against the rules I guess? 

Anyway the Eastern theme continued as Sally and the boys went off to watch Thor: Rangnorak and we set up Dragon Castle. 

This is a tile-taking-and-placing game that is slightly reminiscent of Azul, in that what tile(s) you take dictates what tiles are available for others. Score points for sets (bigger the better) during play, and points for shrines (higher the better!) at the end of the game - play is something of a trade-off between these two options. I've played this a lot in January, and my prep fortunately held up:

Sam 45

Ian 41

Andrew 36

Although hats off to Andrew for refusing no less than two proposed do-overs, instead preferring a philosophical sanguinity. Starting something of an evening meme, we agreed that Martin would 'probably' quite like it. BUWMLI (But would Martin like it) score: 3/5

Next we set up Beta Colony: in Earth's distant future, humanity escapes into the cosmos in order to play a massive Stefan Feld game.

It involves dice (move/do actions!) fuel (manipulate dice) resources (pay for actions!) and artifacts (build stuff!) as we hurtled around a vast rondel in space like children on a spinning roundabout, making ourselves giddy with Euro excitement. We added in spacey music, starting off with Brian Eno - Andrew broke the mood by identifying the long, atmospheric ambience as 'Brian Eno's doorbell' -  and then Vangelis, as we hoovered up resources and spent them building futuristic space pods, or not so futuristic buildings like, weirdly, Big Ben or the Sydney Opera House. It was very Feldy in the mechanisms, with agonizing decisions and plenty of 'oh shit' moments. But not Feldy at all in the scoring, which was quite refreshing. Ian moonwalked his way to a fairly convincing victory - we lost the scores but agreed it was something along the lines of:

Ian 62

Sam 56

Andrew 52

Not so much a battle, or even a settle, as a puzzle. We liked it! BUWMLI score: 1/5

Although we'd established Ian as leader of Beta Colony only shortly after the kids retired (albeit past their usual bedtime) everyone felt like a silly luck-pusher to shake things up a bit. Andrew brought out Las Vegas, and as well as the silly luck-pushing there was a fair amount of screw-you placement as well, with at one point several casinos giving out nothing at all, so balanced were the dice in them. 

although not on this occasion

Ian was doing so poorly in the second round it looked like a straight fight between myself and Andrew, but he surged back in round three to claim an improbable and spectacular victory!

Ian $310k

Andrew/Sam $270k each

Fortified by both alcohol and reckless abandon, we broke out our third new game of the evening in Troika, one of those Oink publications that come in neat, tidy little packages. We went through the simple rules and were off!

In Troika there are tiles numbering 1 to 15, with three of every number bar the 7 - there are seven 7's. You shuffle the tiles face-down as an 'extraction zone' and imagine yourself spacepeople landed on a distant planet (so far, so Beta) gathering tiles either to make gems (a run of three tiles) or fuel (three of the same number). The value of the gems is the right-most number of the highest tile: so 1-2-3 is three points whereas 9-10-11 would only be worth one point. You need fuel to get off the planet - without it, you can't score your gems. 

On a turn you flip a tile over and then have a choice: take a face-up tile into your container, a face-down tile into your hand (maximum of three in your hand!) or return a tile from container or hand to the extraction zone. That's pretty much the game, although you can declare yourself out of the round by shouting Troika! and the first person to do so scores a bonus five points: which can be huge in this game, where the winner of a round (ie highest value gem total) only gets 2 points! Second gets a point - third gets minus a point!

This simple affair had us marvelling at how delightful it was - tactical, luck-pushing, and a little bit nasty in places. I emerged the victor in a tense third round as I called Troika before anyone else before the second time:

Sam 3

Ian 2

Andrew 1

BUWMLI score: 4/5!

And with that, Saturday night drew to a close: nice games, nice company! Cheers guys.