Probably Thou Art a Cruel Mistress

Today, it’s me, Gonzalo, who takes the role of  scribe of these chronicles, so please we patient with my stumbling English.

Last Tuesday Adam, Joe and me met at Joe’s for some board game action. I felt like playing Smash Up, so I brought it and shamelessly forced them to humour me. It’s a crazy area control game, played with cards, in wich you take two factions (decks), shuffle them together, and fight over the dominance of several bases. The factions belong to epic nerdy themes like pirates, ninjas or dinosaurs. So you can have a team up of zombie plants vs robot ninjas and alien pirates…So much for traditional, non random, trading, euro games, eh? Long story made short, you have minions and actions. You use minions for controlling the bases, and actions for gaining adventages and messing with other players.

Joe fought along the fairy ninjas, Adam was robot-russian bear cavalry and I was ghost pirates. The game dragged a little at the start, because even if the mechanics are pretty simple, there is a lot to read in each of the cards. But soon enough, we were screwing which each other, killing minions left and right, and doing all kind of witty, complicate schemes.

Around the middle of the game, Adam and myself were a little ahead. Joe face a grave conundrum, having to decide whom to grant victory.  After some thought, instead of that, he decided in the most Salomon-like way, to kill both of our minions and call it a day.

After that, I saw my chance to win, and having the biggest mouth in the known universe, I couldn’t help but comment that I had a master evil plan. Of course, Joe, hearing that, decided to play a card on me that forbade me from playing actions during the next turn, and thus keeping me from victory.

Adam took that chance and won. Damn you, Joe!!!

The score was 16,15, 12 (Adam, Gonzalo, Joe)

Then we played Kingdom Builder, even if I was weary of playing it, having read about its dryness. . They explained me the rules, and it results it wasn’t that bad at all.

I found myself enjoying and planning, and thinking I wasn’t doing that badly, when suddenly, the game ended. I don’t know how, but when the game ended, I had still scores of my little houses to build. Also, it seems that when one of the goals say the part of the board with the least settlements, and you have one with 0 settlements, that is the one with the least settlements! Can you believe it?? How it dares, using logic and language and stuff to steal my victory! Again, Adam won with 45, Joe followed with 41, and I am ashamed to confess my lousy 24.

To wrap up the night, we went for a short game of Pickomino. I don’t really want to talk about it. Stupid worms grumblegrumblegrumble

Joe 11, Adam 5, Gonzalo 2

In despite of my losing streak, I had a blast!!And next time….Revenge will be mine!

Also, we had a charming chat about the proper way to address a group of worms.

						Points
Adam	2	1	1	1	2	7
Joe	1	2	3	3	3	12
Gonz	3	3	2	2	3	13
Andrew	4	1	5	5	5	20

Nexus Oops.

Hovering over the game bags (Yes thats right, game bags) the three Bracknellites (Honorary in Paul's case) were unable to make a decision or push forward a preference for the evenings main game. I floated the idea of three player Nexus with the hard sell of three being regarded as the optimum number by blogs and forums alike. Paul, unable to hide his skepticism, graciously accepted and we proceeded to unpack the mutli-various pieces that come with it.

Configured in its three player format the board looked instantly tight and set for conflict. Resources for exploration were randomly placed on the board and after the first few rounds Paul and I looked enviously over at James' industrial heartland churning out a whopping 14 Rubium per turn to our 9. I made early headway to the centre of the board hoping to poach some refineries, the games lifeblood, from James with Paul adopting the same ploy on his flank. Very quickly we began to see why this game is heralded for 3 players. The balance is perfect. In the game I played with four ended up with almost two separate battles on the same map. Downtime was noticeable and it was too slow paced. With three you always feel you are involved in the game even when it isn't your turn because there nearly always is a battle to be fought.

As the war raged on James' early advances had reaped a healthy collection of victory points and was ahead by 5. Then, he found himself fighting hefty battles on two fronts as exchanges between Paul and myself resulted in a stalemate defended weakly by disinterested troops. And anyway, since the winning margin was 12 points James had to be stopped at all costs! Even though we pushed him back and pinched his best refineries James had staged managed his final push to perfection. Breaking out from his home territories with a miner task force and parachuting into a poorly defended hex of mine he vanquished the troops and satisfied several secret mission cards to reach the required 12.

It was a close run thing. I was left wanting to know how the war would've ended even though the battle had been won. In fact James and I did play out one final conflict - Just for the fun of doing it! I was really impressed with how well this game played with 3 and look forward to the net bout.

James - 12
Chris - 7
Paul - 5

We then tried to squeeze in a game of Trans Europa. Everything was going swimmingly until James realised that he had two cards which were meant to be taken out. And we ran out of time. It was decided that this wouldn't contribute to the table. (Although for the record I was winning!)

Your Purples are Finite

As I missed Tuesday last week and will again this evening, I really needed to fondle some card and to that end, after having played Galaxy Trucker with the boys (Stanley won) I coerced Andrew up to the house for a game.

Andrew was invited to choose and picked out Macao, the Stefan Feld game of dice wheels. We set up and realised we'd forgotten to set up. Then we started playing and realised we'd forgotten how to play. I ambitiously went for multiple-colour cards while Andrew kept his goals more achievable - but due to the vagaries of the dice and our own brains, neither of us could really get going.

Then Andrew suddenly surged along the scoring track and the wall, only to just as quickly lose momentum. And I fretted about the fact I couldn't activate any of my cards - I picked up two penalty chits and was about to receive a third when I pretty much stumbled on the tactic of using the joker cards from the city quarters - I had less goods to deliver as a result, but allied to my Statue card (which gave me bonus points for the dark city quarters, where the jokers were purchased) meant I was onto a winner, running out 60-something to Andrew's 40-something.

In the game's final quarter I'd finally accelerated through the gears. However I still forgot to implement one or two cards several times, and we're not sure if I mis-used the Midwife card... so it should remain non-leaderboard.

Macao is a great game but every now and then you seem to run into a bit of a dud - it happened before with myself Hannah and Anja, where none of us could really get going. If the dice help you and the cards come out in a way that invites chaining it can be brilliant. You also need to be switched on, and we really weren't last night - both of us finding that we didn't have enough cubes to do anything significant several times... hence the title of this post.

Carrera Hearts Poker

That’s what played this evening at Roll For The Soul, more or less, and not in that order. There were four of us at the start: me, Adam, Joe and Martin (Gonz couldn't make it. Something about a "birthday". Not sure what that's all about). Tonight we were banished upstairs because there was a gig downstairs and I suppose the owner of the cafe thought that a group of people yelling “Here goes his funny bone!” at sensitive moments of the set wouldn’t go down well with the artist.

Of course, we didn’t play Operation. Instead we played Black Spy. A rather feeble makeover of Hearts, the famous card game. The difference here is that the cards have illustrations of spies on them, they only go up to eleven (with a lot of sevens), and there are five suits instead of four. I have little to no patience with games that are just new versions of old favourites and this is no exception.

We played the first round with a fundamental rule wrong: we thought the player with most points won. I won. Then we looked at the rules and saw that we should be aiming for the lowest points. We played a second round, and I came in last by miles with 70+ points, while everyone else scored in single figures more or less.

After this, Katy arrived and we all played Kakerlakenpoker. This is a pure bluffing game. In a pack of 64 cards of eight types of animal (rat, cockroach, bat, fly etc) the rule is simple: pass a card to an opponent face down and tell them what it is. They can either say they believe you or not (if they’re wrong they keep the card, face up, in front of them. If they’re right, you keep it) or pass it on, having looked at it, to someone else and the bluffing begins again. The first person to have four cards of the same type loses.

So simple, yet so cunning. And, luckily for me, not an “improved” version of poker (although I did inwardly wince when I heard the name). It’s all about the bluff, the nerve, about having the chutzpah to look your opponent in the eye and say, without laughing, “That’s a frog.”

There is only one loser in this game, and it was me, hoisted on my own petard of confidence: five rats were out (three in front of me) and I thought I knew where the others were but Martin blind-sided me, and I confidently said “That’s not a rat!” to his card, but it was. My second last-place of the evening. Suddenly, everyone’s eagerness to have a RFTS leaderboard was looking like a trap!

Finally, it was a second appearance for The Palaces Of Carrera. This game had been a cautious hit the last time we played. Katy bowed out, and the four of us set up and Adam got an introduction to the rules. I played with half an eye on the time. I remembered how quickly the game can end, with little warning.

I bought up expensive white and yellow marble, so I could build in the highly desirable residences. Martin bought dirty dirty black marble, keeping his buildings at the lower end of the market. Joe and Adam went for cities in the middle.

During the game, Martin admitted that he still didn’t know the right strategy for this game even though he’d played it six times. Certainly, I was feeling the pinch from spending so much early on, and I thought I'd made a terrible mistake. But then, we all seemed a bit skint. We’d begun with a spate of buying marble. So much so that we ended up with no blocks left in the bag! An event so startling that Martin reeled back and accidentally knocked his pint glass off the table in such a way that most of the glass went under the table. Physically impossible, you might think, but anything’s possible at Roll For The Soul!

As for the game, Adam picked his way through the rules gingerly, like a cat unsure of the surface it’s about to jump on. I went for money, mostly. Joe had started building up resources in readiness for a big push when once again Martin closed the game suddenly. The thing about this game is: after that happens, you only get one more go, maximum. And there’s not a lot you can do in one go. If you don’t have some nice buildings ready to score at a moment’s notice, you can be left scratching your head.

However, I had used up all my bad luck earlier that evening, and my investing in the two highest echelons of Carreran property was just enough to get me bonus points for both (I tied with Adam in one, and with Joe in the other). This sped me off around the score-track and I ended comfortably in first, with Martin second, cursing my luck.

I left after this, but I guess they others stayed for one more. I await more news...

By the way, what about this leaderboard? Any ideas? Something serious like The Division or something a bit random and silly?

First and Last and Always

That’s how the new season began for me.

I arrived first and, having only recently learnt that the right way to knock on Joe’s door was to rattle the letter-box, I completely missed the new and handsome door knocker that’s now attached. Joe patiently pointed it out to me, and even gave a little demonstration, so I’d know for next time.

There were four of us: myself, Joe, Adam and Gonz. At the start of the evening, while we were waiting for Gonz, we decided to have a look at a new game: Renaissance Man. Joe had played this game half a dozen times as a single player, so he knew the rules well. When Gonz arrived we were still looking at it and, since it was already out we decided to give it a go.

The reception was not great. It’s sort of like Ludo, but with cards. In Ludo, you have no choice but to wait patiently for the right roll of the die. In Renaissance Man, if you don’t have the right card, then there’s not a lot you can do. The game looks as if it’s giving you options, but it’s only an illusion. Each card has an action, but to do those, you still need the right card. There are four cards in the middle of the table that you can fight over, but only if you have the right card. Also, as the game progresses, and people’s pyramids of cards are built, you get more actions per turn (one go per level) but fewer actions to chose from (you can only action those cards which are not covered).

At the end, Adam needed one more card to build his pyramid, and his game was reduced to picking up new cards at the start of each round, hoping one would fit, and if they didn’t, he couldn’t do anything. I was close, but I had a little leeway in my actions. Then I worked out how three cards in my hand would work together, so I was able to win triumphantly (or rather, put us all out of our misery).

1. Andrew
2. Adam
3= Joe
3= Gonz

Joe apologised as he put the game away. He said during the game that he didn’t understand how the problem of just waiting for the right card hadn’t come up in play-testing. Then he had the terrible thought that perhaps it had, but the play-testers had gone “Hey, this is fun!”

I could see how it might be an enjoyable single-player: just you, your objective, and a strict time limit. As a multi-player, it was very dry and with almost no interaction except over the four cards in the centre. I will hold off from rating it on BGG so Joe can trade it away before its reputation spreads.

After this, we were in need of a pick-me-up. Gonz suggested Space Alert, which was certainly a complete change, but we wanted something less co-operative. We chose Stone Age. A classic, by any definition of the word. Gonz needed some prompting since he was used to playing on the computer, which did all the collecting stuff/moving pieces for you. Adam, too, needed a helping hand since he seemed to “round up” some of his sums at the start of the game.

I went for civilisations, and had half a plan to go for people multipliers, but it wasn’t to be. Adam got into farms and axes early - the Sam tactic, as he later called it. Joe got a bit of everything and Gonz built his family up. But mostly we were all in thrall to the Stinky Cup. Oh, Stinky Cup! Somehow it’s peculiar aroma adds to the realism of a game based on unbathed hunter-gatherers.

Everyone except me went for huts in a big way. I was mortally hurt mid-game by two rolls for food that came up snake eyes, and me with no axes! I almost starved! Luckily, stone-age man could digest wood. We used two of Joe's finest dice arenas, and Joe managed to roll a die in such a way that it paused dramatically on one corner, before settling on five. Adam shot off further and further into the lead, and it was a comprehensive win by the end.

Adam 206
Gonz 185
Joe 181
Andrew 154

After this, the rain had begun and we set off into the night. A new season is underway! New hopes, new dreams, new horizons! Surely, if God hadn’t meant us not to play games, he wouldn’t have made cubes dice-shaped!

						Points
Adam	1	2	5	5	5	18
Gonz	2	3	5	5	5	20
Andrew	4	1	5	5	5	20
Joe	3	3	5	5	5	21

The Bad Lieutenant

The Bracknell bunch season finale took place on Friday night as there was a postponement due to Paul's trip to the orderly realms of Switzerland. On James' arrival it was impressed upon him in no uncertain terms that he stood a chance of topping the ratio table should things go his way. His excitement became somewhat dulled when he realised that there was no trophy that came with the award, a feeling I can totally identify with when my run away B division win in the East Berks Scrabble Club league went totally unnoticed by the national press.

Anyway to the games. I felt that in order to give James the greatest chance of temporary greatness we should plumb for one of his favourites. I'd asked earlier in the week what his top 5 games were and Lords of Waterdeep came in at number one. Never a hard sell for the Bracknell trio it was unboxed and set up. During its course each player took a turn at extending a lead only to be dragged back. Paul had established himself as the keeper of the useful buildings, James had spotted and completed some beneficial Plot Quests and I had elected (Against my better judgement) to take the extra man in the lieutenant.

Approaching the last two rounds James had opened up a decent, unassailable looking, lead of around 30 points. On the final turn I performed on the surface what looked like a total bastard move. I could see Paul needed warriors to complete a massive 25 point quest and I took them just to stop him. Next up was the completion of my own heavy hitting quest. That done I was still left with around 10 points to gain with two agents to place. James, out of adventurers, was left claiming extra pieces to bolster his score as it looked to all around the table that my chance had gone. I was left with 3 warriors and 1 cleric and scant few options on the board to choose with all available quests way too expensive to finish.

With a final roll of the dice, which are not included or even part of this game, I elected to reset the quests and hoped that one would arrive that I could complete. It did. 8 points after nabbing an extra cleric. James took it on the chin as the final count up of completed quests and money etc revealed my narrowish win.

Chris - 180
James - 168
Paul - 144

At this point credit should be extended to Paul who mentioned to me on the drive to the station that he had a mandatory quest in his intrigue cards. He decided not to play kingmaker and let James and I battle it out. He said he was sorely tempted after my blocking move, but as I pointed out, if I hadn't taken those resources I couldn't have completed that last quest!!

Then with 45 minutes left we choose to take a run at Paul's nemesis 7 Wonders. Every time we have played this Paul has spent the bulk of the game scratching his head and saying things like "I really don't know what I'm supposed to be doing". Only this time he thought he didn't but he did winning comfortably with best military and most useful guilds...

Paul - 43
Chris - 37
James - 33

And for you palace watchers out there, I had it.

Not sure what this does to the final table but I'm pretty sure it leaves the winners of each category intact and James doesn't have to worry about a trophy he's not getting.

Stoned Again

As the season is playing out a dramatic, suspenseful finale, there's been just enough time to nip out to the foyer and get an ice cream before the final curtain.

Which over-reaching analogy actually translates as Andrew and I meeting in the pub last night for the Everton-Newcastle game. Now I know it may seem like a flagrant disregard for GNN etiquette to start talking about football on here, but while we sat in The Annex there was time for a couple of games of Keltis: The Dice Game.

This is a very abstract Reiner Knizia design, inspired by the Spiel-des-Jahres winner Keltis, which I had recently played with Joe. As with the original game, you are moving four pieces ("stones") of your own up several tracks in order to score points. Unlike the original (which uses cards) with the dice version there's a different engine. I'll let you work out what it is.

On your turn you can roll and, if you choose to, re-roll some or all of your dice once. You can then move one stone up one track. So far so very luck-based. However - it's a Knizia remember - there is room for strategy in that stopping at certain places on the tracks gets you bonuses, either moving other stones, having a free second turn, or picking up wishing stones.

pic courtesy BGG

The wishing stones give you bonus points (or penalties, if you don't have enough of them) at the end of the game. So there are sometimes reasons to stop your stone from moving as far as it can in order to grab these advantages. I thought I was playing a nice steady game of moving my stones up fairly equally, while Andrew rushed two to the end of the track and returned for two more. But in both our games he won by 4 or 5 points.

It's not one we'll be raving about but considering it packs its board and pieces into a tiny box and plays in about ten minutes, it was perfect for sitting in a pub and looking reasonably inconspicuous.

Despite my losses I went home feeling elated, as Everton won. Some games are more important than others...