Candles in the Win

Saturday, and with Sally up north visiting her folks, the boys were given free rein on Amazon and elected to watch Spiderman: Far From Home. Meanwhile in the other room I was prepping the play area. With Steve, Katy and Ian on their way, I'd asked what kind of mood they were in. Although Steve suggested an epic (and I was very amenable) Ian preferred something moderate, and as he has an epic already in the form of the journey home, I forewent idle thoughts of SpaceCorp and was instead setting up Ecos: First Continent.

Here the players are kind of deities, building landscape and populating it with animals. The nice thing about it is the bingo-style mechanic, where a tile is drawn and everyone gets to place a cube on a matching symbol on their cards. If they don't have a matching card, they still get to turn their dial, which will eventually trigger more cards into your deck, or adding a card to your tableau from your deck, or gaining an extra cube for your limited economy.

When a card has all its cube spaces filled up, it activates: adding landscape tiles or animals, mountains or trees, possibly eating animals, and scoring points in all manner of incongruous ways. And you get to shout Ecos! like a bingo-mad old fart who has forgotten what words mean.

At the start it's pretty fast-moving. But even then, we were all figuring out how to best use our bespoke decks - you start with only three cards face-up and the deal is constructing an engine with the other cards in your deck, or the other cards available from the general supply. Steve was baffled. Katy was building mountains, reasoning they'd be helpful for her gorillas. Ian was turning his dial the wrong way and finding the arrows confusing.

I sped into the lead after about 20 minutes, and remained competitive for another 20. After that, I merely looked at my cards and wondered where on earth any more points were going to come from. On the other side of the table, Steve was having a Ganz Schon Clever-style activation party, with cards begetting cards begetting cards. Katy kept crying Gorilla! in a manner that reminded me of Kid Carpet. Ian pulled off his 'one big move' for a huge points haul, but then found himself in a stasis similar to mine.

In fact the longer Ecos went on, the less enamoured I was of it - there was so much waiting for activations to be resolved, sometimes of two or three people at a time, that I felt like we were merely minions computing a somewhat erratic program. And I worse Minion. The minor caveat of down-time I'd had in my game with Stan had exploded into a major one.

Katy however had no such qualms and sailed serenely past all of us to trigger the end-game.

Katy 81
Ian 55
Steve 50
Sam 37

Katy liked it. Ian didn't. "I'd play it again" Steve. But he won't, because it's going straight in the trade pile!

Next up was a game Steve brought with him - Welcome To... a flip and write game where players are seeking to score points in a variety of ways by building a housing estate; with every turn a decision between three available numbers and three attendant thingies such as a pool, tree, or more-points-for-certain-sized-estates. You get to name your own town, too, and Ian was furious to see I'd written Pootown on my sheet. "I was going to do that!" he exclaimed. He went for Pooville instead and Steve called his Weeville. Katy disappointingly called her town Katy, but she was to make up for her apparent lack of immaturity later.

Welcome To... has an inherent tension to it in there are planning objectives that score points, so it feels a bit like a race, assuming you're paying attention to what everyone else is doing, which I didn't. I grabbed one of the planning objectives, but in doing so had spent a lot of time erecting fences that otherwise wouldn't be bringing me many points. I neglected trees, didn't build pools at all and, come the end, had time to repent at leisure as my arid Pootown scored very little. At least it was better than Pooville though:

Steve 81
Katy 68
Sam 57
Ian 48

Next up was Wavelength. Ian suggested - in hindsight, an excellent call - that we play co-operatively rather than have the active team not be able to converse with anyone. The rules supply a co-op variant: Seven cards only, and the target scores 3 points, not 4. But if you hit the target exactly, you get to add an extra card. Much as I enjoyed coming to hate Ecos and building too many fences in Welcome To... this was the highlight of the evening for me, even though we all struggled to think of clues at times...

After giving Steve a brief overview, we kicked things off with a pretty impressive run of target-hitting before finding we fell just short of a win in the Just One-style scoring system. "We need to play again!" Katy cried, and nobody objected to that. I don't recall in which game all these things occurred, but we do now know that I don't rate Henry Cavill as an actor, nobody finds slugs sexy and Steve doesn't want to time-travel to the zombie apocalypse.

But the clue of the night was perhaps Gwyneth Paltrow's Vagina which Katy invoked for Bad Smell/Good Smell. Obviously the vagina in question has been in the news recently as Gwyneth has been selling dubiously-themed candles from her otherwise totally-sane website, but still, this had the three men present stumped. Good enough to be made into a candle didn't necessarily mean good at all in Paltrow's case. Steve imagined that Gwyneth was very hygienic and maybe therefore would smell good. Ian wondered whether hygiene came into it at all and simply the fact it was Gwyneth Paltrow meant the smell would be bad. Were we comparing it to all vaginas? Or all parts of Gwyneth Paltrow's anatomy? It was so subjective. I can't even remember what we or Katy surmised in the end, but at least our second game was a win, so along with the Power of Doctor Manhattan, the Age of a Horse and the Harmfulness of Bleach, maybe we have Gwyneth to thank after all, even if the final clue of the night was a miss, as the saddest song I could think of at the time was Candle in the Wind, and perhaps all the previous candle-talk meant nobody found it particularly sad at all.

Wavelength is just brilliant. But Ecos made me want to play SpaceCorp again. Anyone up for that?

Monster Hunch

Tuesday night, and with Andrew a late withdrawal due to a cold, it was myself (Sam) Joe, Andy, Ian and Martin sat around the table. Joining us for the first part of the evening was Stan, and whilst (big) Joe coaxed another game of Carta Impera Victoria out of Martin and Andrew, our trio began the night with Welcome To... which I'm beginning to feel could be continued with ...the mildly underwhelming roll-and-write. But as we didn't play the entirely proper rules, I could be doing it a disservice...

The game sees you as rival developers building estates and scoring points for pools and trees and pleasing the city planners. Like Avenue, it's a roll-and-write with no rolling. Unlike Avenue, it's a mite fiddly and we had to keep referencing the rules. It feels a teeny bit bland - for me the fun of a roll-and-write is all about that sense of frustration and hoping your numbers come up (literally, in this case). It doesn't need this amount of options. I don't think my opinion was influenced by the score, but feel free to draw your own conclusions...

Ian 87
Stan 60
Sam 52

On the other half of the table, CIV was in it's final stages, and a second play didn't seem to be really changing Joe or Martin's mind. Martin said it was clever, but not much fun. Joe was quietly reflecting on the opinions of Space Biff, whose review had convinced him to buy the game. I'm not sure what Andy thought.

Martin 3 (wins on tie-breaker)
Joe 3
Andy 1

With those palette-cleansers out of the way, and Stan off to bed (in theory, he snuck down later) we combined into a five to play Cryptid.

Like CIV and Welcome To... this also had its GNN debut over the last week, but possibly to a more appreciative crowd. The board is set up; the cryptid occupies a single hex on it; no-one knows where. But everyone has some information, such as the cryptid being on one of two types of landscape, or in proximity to a bear. And a picture of its location is gradually revealed over time. That's the idea, anyway. It was a bamboozling affair, with all of us scratching our heads. I confess I found it hard to remember my own clue, let along figure out anyone else's. And it came to a sudden end as Joe searched for the cryptid and found it in the first place he looked!

Joe - wins
Everyone else - disappointed the cryptid isn't better at hiding

I was amazed that anybody had any theories at this point, seeing as when I look at the board all I can ascertain is some kind of DNA structure that I can't possibly understand. We all saw the comparison with Zendo, but weren't sure if it was a favourable one.

Now began The Great Ethnos Debate, as Martin disappeared into the front room and returned with the game Katy hates Most Of All. Martin said it needed some love, and I was amenable. But the other side of the table seemed unstirred. Ian said he'd need a rule refresher. Joe said he'd be ok with it, but without much zeal. And Andy said he could play it, in the same way one says I could unblock the sink. It looked like Ethnos was to be packed away again, but in the face of incredible odds, Martin persisted. He kept persisting when it seemed the whole table was swaying towards Beowulf instead. Twice the lid of Ethnos was heading onto the box, but eventually we set it up and played. Kudos to Martin.

In Ethnos we are in Slovakia a far distant fantasy island, struggling for control over six differently-coloured regions by building bands of warriors - in our case, Wingfolk, Merfolk, Giants, Trolls, Orcs and Centaurs. The basic scoring is simple - area majority on the map, and the size of the bands you build, which can be all of a colour, or all of a race. The catch is when you build a band, you must discard all your other cards, which are now available for everyone else to pick up. Do you play patiently, and hopefully? Or do as Joe does and 'whack off a Merman'?

Some extra wrinkles in scoring come off the back of your band's leader - the much-sought-after Centaurs allow you add a second band, Trolls break ties in the area-scoring and so on. It plays really fast, as if you're not playing a band you're simply picking up a card. All of us were surprised by our turns arriving seconds after we'd just had one.

After the first age, Martin was out in front but I was hot on his tail. After the second, we were level and the others seemed far behind. But the third and final age saw Martin streak ahead as I picked up what I could only describe as the Bash Street Kids of Ethnos - very little matching colours or races! Meanwhile Ian went from last to third (and briefly second!) with a strong finish.

Martin 88
Sam 75
Ian 73
Andy 58
Joe 55

Considering the table-wide pre-play reticence, Ethnos seemed to go down pretty well. Joe did say he enjoyed it, but didn't like area majority much. Martin announced that he loved area majority. I said the only thing I didn't like about the game were the plastic markers. Ian and Martin said they loved the plastic markers. Martin tried to get the plastic markers back in the box, and changed his mind.

With the whisky now flowing (a decision my feet are reminding me of regretfully today) we finished the night with Zero Down, Knizier's Rummy-style puzzler where points are bad.

Everyone receives nine cards and begin a series of swaps with a card from the tableau on the table, until people get a decently low score and start knocking, and a second knock triggers the end of the round. Ian began badly with a 23 point haul, whereas Joe set the pace with a piddling 5 points. In the second round Andy thought he'd zeroed (completed a point-free hand, which instantly ends the round) but had miscalculated. Then in subsequent rounds Ian and I zeroed. With a round to to go, Martin led with Ian in second and me third. A dramatic swing saw them fall second and joint-fourth!

Sam 39
Martin 40
Andy 46
Ian and Joe 48

And another GNN came to a respectable 11pm close. Until next time...

We may lose, and we may win

Friday night games briefly threatened to be a four-player affair before settling into a cosy head to head between Andrew and myself. We started with Welcome To... which is a roll and write game with no rolling. Instead, cards are flipped and you choose one of three sets to add a number and a feature to your growing neighbourhood. Maybe you put up a fence, or build a pool. Maybe you plant a tree. It's all points, and though often it's hard to tell from an initial play, we found it a little underwhelming in comparison to the delightful agony of say, Rolling America, or Avenue.

I won, but should mention Andrew allowed me a significant do-over when I realised I'd built a fence in the wrong place.

Next up was Heaven and Ale, such a hit earlier this year and still much beloved by Andrew and myself. It was a very curious game, as I began spending big and realised I'd run out of money with little recourse to more. Instead I had to pick up scoring markers and sacrifice a card in order to get anywhere, and I felt it was all a terrible error as Andrew was moseying along grabbing as many tiles as it seemed he felt like, building sheds and the money rolling in. Weirdly though my early scoring meant I didn't have to fret over picking up scoring markers in the final round, and Andrew's momentum stalled slightly. The scores were close - we didn't write them down - but I nabbed it right at the end. A baffling play that suggests there are still avenues to be explored in this game...

My reward from Andrew was a fortune cookie that said I should learn from my mistakes. Oddly enough this is exactly what Andrew said he should do when next playing Heaven and Ale before I opened it.

The night was still young enough to squeeze in a nightcap in both gaming and whisky terms, so we broke out trusty old Take It Easy.

Andrew called video games and I did board games. It was noticeable for the agony absent from Welcome To... recognisable from every previous play, and our acknowledgement of our terrible maths as we both reached for calculators to work out the scores. My maths was so bad I turned on the torch my accident. Andrew won the first round, but was scuppered by nine-based optimism in the second, when Beowulf came out to stump him... meanwhile I recovered from some appalling hedge-betting as I skirted the edges, before finally having to commit somewhere more central...

Sam 308
Andrew 281

Lovely to play again! And now I have the Eagles playing in my head.