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.

A marble-ous evening

On the last Tuesday before Christmas, I turned up at Joe's ten minutes late and found that I was still only the second to arrive. Ian was already there, looking tired and hoping that beer would give him a second wind, while Andy showed up just as Joe was explaining the roll and write game of Twenty One to us. And so he joined us.

It's pretty basic. There are five rows of six dice on your score pad, different for each player, and each turn someone rolls six coloured dice and you have to fill in each dice with an equal or lower score, completing one row at a time. Bonuses are awarded for exact matches. That's the jist of it, anyway. The game ends when a player completes their last row, and when Ian decided to take fewer points to do just that, it left the rest of us desperately writing in whatever shitty scores were allowed. Poor old Joe scored just four points for his last row.

Ian 118
Andy 97
Andrew 94
Joe 87

Sam had arrived mid game and watched proceedings with interest. Next up was the main event. Joe suggested Colosseum as a big Christmas type of game, but in the end Calimala was chosen. It was new to Joe but with his years of Eurogaming behind him, we felt that shipping silk and contributing marble statues wouldn't pose a problem.

Ian shot off in the early stages, winning all four of the four opening scoring rounds, giving him a 12, 3, 2, 1, 0 lead. But then Andy's patient planning paid off as he started a mid game revival. Sam was the last of us to score any points at all but then made great leaps up the score track until he found his player mat devoid of resources or silk with the final round looming. He had to resort to choosing an action he couldn't complete, hoping for a bit of luck with the cards he'd pick up as compensation. He didn't get any.

Joe did fine for a first time, but he admitted that without time to go through the rules once, he struggled with any game. The mid-game discussion about the (almost imperceptible) difference between Greek and Swedish jazz probably distracted him too.

Andy 32
Ian 29
Sam 28
Joe 21
Andrew 18

Next up was a game that was new to all of us except Sam: Tag City. I was intrigued by its vague air of Jet Set Radio graffiti art. It's another roll and write game (or, as we hilariously put it, a Roland Rat game) but this time you are assigning dice to some tetris type shapes that all players can choose to fill up their grid. Points are awarded for completed rows, columns and areas.

We were pushing the boundaries of the game, playing with five players while the box suggests only up to four. We did this by utilising the fifth board supplied with the game and then using a die from Twenty One. Sheer anarchy. The game seemed fine, though. In fact, it seemed better suited to five players than Calimala did, with the previous game having a sense of lack of control over unfolding events.

Maybe Tag City had a sense of too much control since Andy had an attack of AP in one round as he arranged and rearranged the dice, unable to decide. "Are you min-maxing it?" asked Joe as Andy continued to prevaricate.

I enjoyed the game, but the lack of single square shapes made me paranoid that I'd leave a shape, row or column unfinishable. We made it to the end with no one accidentally outing themselves as Banksy and, after a series of recounts that saw first Ian then Sam briefly in first, it ended in a tie.

Ian 43
Sam 43
Andrew 35
Andy 33
Joe 21

Although the hour was late, we had enough in us for one last game: For Sale. Sam began by declaring that he never wins this game so he was going to do the opposite to his usual cagey start, opening the bidding with big bold six, with the promise of a 27 for the winner. I bid eight and eventually won. I was quite pleased with it until the next two rounds saw Sam pick up a 28 and Joe get a 29 for six coins each.

Joe went from tragedy to triumph in the cheque round, picking up a zero dollar cheque despite bidding a 19, but then he netted a $14k cheque with only a 10. Similarly, Sam was delighted in the final round when he discovered his 16 was, improbably, the highest card showing and he picked up a $13k cheque with it. Ian ended the game in his second draw of the evening, but this time at the wrong end of the score board.

Sam 65
Joe 61
Andy 53
Andrew 44
Ian 44

And so, the evening ended. There's no chance of a Tuesday meeting any time soon, what with Christmas and New year in the way and a possibility of a mid holiday games evening so I'll bid everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year now. Cheers, all.

Seven games, only five results

Due to the staggered times that some of the regulars would be arriving, twice this evening a game was chosen and set up, ready to begin, when a knock on the door signalled a change of plans. The two unlucky games were Santo Domingo (complete with rules explanation from Joe) and Coloretto.

But what about the games we did play? And who did we play them with? Joe hosted, with Katy, Ben, Martin, Andy and me the early arrivals. Ian and Adam were expected later. We began with a short roll & write game called Twenty One. In it each player has a unique score sheet showing a number of rows of coloured dice, each with a value. Working from the top, each player has to use the similarly coloured dice rolled that turn to write in number on these dice, with the proviso that that number must be lower or equal to the one on the sheet. Direct hits will score you a bonus when you complete the row. You can fill in as many as you like, but you must fill in one, even if it is to cross one off completely when the dice roll means you have no legal moves.

Joe had played a few two player games recently with one of his daughters, but I think the overall conclusion was that it doesn't work well with so many players. It's a bit of a luck-fest, since there's no way to keep tabs on what everyone wants.

Katy started well and probably thought she had it in the bag until Ben started cranking out rows in the twenties and thirties. And then Andy snuck in at the end to grab second.

Ben 97
Andy 85
Katy 84
Joe 81
Martin 73
Andrew 62

Not sure why it’s called Twenty One, though.

At this point we set up Santo Domingo, only to be stopped by Adam making his way slowly down the stairs. This gave Katy what she'd been begging for all evening: someone who'd support her request for Ponzi Scheme. "It's been six weeks!" She cried, trying to appeal to our better natures. With Adam on board, Ben followed and Joe agreed to be rules explainer. They set up at the bottom of the stairwell, for a change, and got to work.

Adam's beer

New gaming table arrangement

Martin, Andy and I pondered about a quick three player, and chose Coloretto. Martin was confused by Joe having two copies. He chose "the nice one" (Joe's words) but got confused mid-set-up by the different designs and put it away and then went back to the classic original. And then Ian arrived.

And so we embarked on the Grand Tour of Flamme Rogue. A three-stage road race that needs an app (or a printed score sheet) to keep track of the placings.

It was great. Among all the jostling in the peleton, Martin's sprinter seemed remarkably prime to exhaustion while my rouler often found himself stuck one space shorter than the card I'd played.

In one example, Ian cleverly put his leading cyclists, two abreast right at the start of a hill, meaning my two cyclists got stuck behind him. I called him "le coq blocquer" for his spoiling tactics, but he seemed unconcerned at my anguish

Ian's two cyclists stop me in my tracks

Talking of anguish, midway through our game, Katy called me over to the Ponzi game to take a photo of Joe losing quickly. I did so, but just as I left, Joe handed a black envelope over to Adam with a gleam in his eye. The game didn't end then, so I assume Joe's secret deal was a success.

Ponzi Scheme did finish before we did, though, with both Ben and Joe going bust in the same round.

Adam 10 points
Katy 6 points
Ben -$1
Joe -$200

“That was brilliant,” said Katy. They went on to play Animals on Board.

Flamme Rogue was hotting up, with the third stage in full swing. It was a bit of a nightmare, with a long winding uphill struggle towards the end. The final standings across all three stages were:

Martin 9
Andy 7
Andrew 5
Ian 3

Martin's unused cards

What an encounter. And really quite tense all the way through. No one seemed happy with their cards at any point. In fact, I seem to recall the moaning beginning at the first corner of the first race! But what is sport without moaning about fate? If you don’t complain, it just means you don’t care!

And Animals on Board ended

Katy 40
Adam 38
Joe 31
Ben 28

Then Ben departed. We tried to convince him to stay with Fuji Flush, but his willpower was too strong. Instead, the remaining seven of us watched as Joe got out the absinthe for our final game of the evening.

I was in a good position for the win fairly on, with three high cards in my hand. But I was thwarted and had to rely on good luck to get me some new high cards. I got a 19, and played it just after the deck was recycled since I assumed that the 20 must still be somewhere inside it. Right? Wrong. Ian had it! Le Coq Blocquer lived up to his reputation as he played the 20 that he’d only just picked up from the reshuffled deck!

But I couldn’t be stopped. Martin played 9 and I joined him. Katy played 11 to try and stop us, but then Ian beat her card. Frustratingly (for them, not us) Adam also had an 11! We would have been beaten had Ian not stepped in. But he did, so we did.

Martin 0
Andrew 0
Ian 1
Joe 1
Adam 3
Andy 3
Katy 4

Phew! What an evening. But, then again, aren’t they all?