This One Goes Up to 12

On Friday Andrew and I recruited Joe to teach him our current favourite 'long' game - Scythe. Joe was willing, in fact he was openly keen, but first he had to go through the warm-up games with Stanley and Little Joe: we bashed out a quick game of PitchCar (Big Joe won after my third lap collapse) followed by FUSE (which we all won) before the little folk were packed off to bed, and Scythe set up.

Scythe is like Eclipse - only on land, not in the future, and faster-moving. And different in other ways too. In fact I'm not sure why I keep equating the two in my head, other than the fact that I'm happy to break my no-long-games rule for both. Also! - Scythe isn't actually that long, although thematically it feels broad in scope. There's worker-placement, but also worker movement. There's engine-building, but also luck. There's combat, but the winner can potentially be the most placid (...although you'd have to wonder what on earth the other players were up to if that happened).

Joe took to the game much as Adam had done a couple of weeks previously. Like Adam, he focused on production, whilst Andrew and I mobilized and traveled the board. Andrew's special ability - workers can swim! - was one I'd previously pooh-poohed as rather prosaic, not to say silly, but he showed quickly the benefits of spreading the net wide, claiming territory as well as resource rewards.  Mine and Joe's workers baulked at the sight of water. Joe bunched his workers together for what I assumed to be reasons of cosiness, whilst I delayed building my mechs until they were really cheap.

But by that point the game was approaching its final chapter - both Andrew and Joe had reached the factory and had a decent spread of territories, whereas I was slightly hemmed in on the western side of the board.

Joe's mechs look rural

Andrew triggered the end of the game, but he wasn't as popular as Joe or I - popularity deciding exactly what your monetary rewards will be for objectives/territory/resources. Despite his strong presence on the board, might he have moved too soon? It's all very well completing objectives, but do you have enough respect from the people, man? As it turned out, he did:

Andrew 60 - wins on tie-breaker!
Sam 60
Joe 49

A strong showing from Joe on his first play, and I'm glad to say he liked Scythe. Hopefully we'll play again soon.

Joe enjoying himself, despite paparazzi

Thanks to Scythe's aforementioned brevity, it was still early. So we played Joe's new purchase Junk Art, which I'd missed out on at the last GNN meet. Each round has a new rule that players must obey, so it's like a scrambled Bandu: no currency to avoid blocks, just various rules to implement them. It was a lot of fun, and I think Joe won this.

Because Scythe doesn't take that long - have I mentioned that? - we still had time for another game!

We introduced Joe to Cosmic Run, our current favourite short game. Roll dice, race to planets - before they blow up. Possibly the most fatalistically-themed game out there, where you are essentially on a protracted suicide mission. I had a good run of results going on with this game, but -whether it was the hand of fate or the wine - Joe handed our arses to us despite insisting he didn't have a clue what was going on. The old Steve Dale manoeuvre! Works every time.

By now we were rather merry. I do recall Joe playing a recording he'd made in his studio: whilst a somber and plaintive piano track played, someone in the studio next door was tuning an oboe to combined comic effect. How we laughed! Although I must confess I misunderstood Joe's explanation at the time and thought we were merely listening to an odd and badly-recorded bit of jazz improv.

After the last planet had imploded cosmically, it was nearing midnight, so we called an end to proceedings, safe in the knowledge that the next day nobody would be waking us up at 6am mistakenly claiming the goldfish was dying*.

Also: chipsticks give you ulcers.

*not necessarily true for me

The Lords of Midnight

Nearly, anyway. One week after the shortest GNN, our thirst for games suddenly explanded again as if it were a spring that had been squashed and held down for seven whole days.

Joe hosted and I, after texting him to say I’d be late, arrived one minute early. I got a sneak preview of Joe’s medieval GNN money.

Then Ben, Ian and Katy arrived soon after.

We began with Junk Art, a game not dissimilar to Bandu, but with added rules. In the first round, for example, instead of choosing a piece for the next player, you are dealt three cards with pictures of the different available blocks. You keep one for yourself and then give the other two to your two neighbours. Then everyone adds that block to their tower.

There’s a whole stack of potential rules to fill a three-round game. Our other two rules were “Speed building,” and “Everyone building the same tower.” Doing best of fulfilling certain objectives gets you “fans”: either a black counter (five fans) or a white counter (one fan). Katy was overjoyed that the black fans were better than the white ones. She cried out “black power!” and raised a clenched fist in salute.

Despite being last in the first round, Katy fought back to take the most fans by the end of the game. Ben dazzled with his creativity in round one, but somehow didn’t attract much of a following.

Katy 9
Joe 8
Ian 6
Ben 4
Andrew 4

With Ben saying he was going to leave early, we decided not to play anything too epic and instead went for another new game: Land Unter. This is a game which is very difficult to describe. Us five players were dealt the whole of the 60-card pack (numbered one to sixty).

These hands contained a number of life belts on them, and when we’d worked out how many we had, we were given that number of lifebelt cards as sort of “lives”.

Three lives left!

Then cards (from a deck of twenty-four, numbered 1 to 12) are revealed two at a time. This is the water level. Everyone plays a card, and the highest card gets first choice (of course, the lowest) of these two water cards. Whoever’s in second gets the other one. Then the player with the highest water card loses a life-belt.

This leaves some 6nimmt-ish agonising as you try to second guess what others might do. Katy proved to be an expert at just undercutting whoever was in first so she rarely picked up a water card at all. After two rounds, her lead was insurmountable: 13, 2, 2, 2, 1.

The clever thing is, at the end of a round, everyone gives their hand of cards to the player on their right. Then another round is played. This means that every player uses everyone’s hand, so there’s no chance to blame a lousy deal for your poor performance.

Towards the end of the game, Joe attempted a stunning comeback, but just fell short.

Katy 19
Joe 13
Ben 10
Ian 7
Andrew 6

Then Ben set off home, and he mentioned that he had a Mah Jongg set and maybe we could play it sometime. We must sort something like that out someday.

So now it was only 9.30 and in the pile of games that Joe had brought in at the start of the evening was Lords Of Vegas. We suggested it first as a joke, then we thought we could get it finished by 11.00. And so it was that the four of us, drunk and sugared up on Skittles, set up the evening’s main event at 9.30! Crazy days.

And Lords of Vegas did not disappoint. Katy got an early three-point casino thanks to a lucky re-organise. I got three lots near each other and then bought one from Joe to link them up. Joe went big on gold and silver. And they lived up to their reputation as rare materials: he had not scored a single point by 1 hour 15 minutes. I made a note.

Joe bides his time

There was controversy and double-crossing and undercutting and gazumping and probably some grouting in there too as we all struggled for more than our fair share. Ian rolled a re-organise and as the dice left his hand he says “It doesn’t count.” Then he saw that he’d won, so he said “It does.” Shameless.

Joe's scoring chip is hidden behind the pretzels

Katy was threatening to join up two casinos to build a huge eight-tile complex and swallow up Joe’s gold casino when Joe offered to buy a vacant lot off her. She accepted, needing the money, but then Joe built on it, using up the last gold tile. Her plans in ruins. Joe was rewarded for this tactic by Lady Fate, as his casinos started to pay out and he powered his way up the score track. Ian’s game, though, fell away, and he ended up with no casinos at all.

At the very end, I joined the gold casinos together (making a nine-tiler), and reorganised, taking control. But it was not enough to get me past more than one five-point barrier and Katy held on for another win.

Katy 54
Andrew 49
Joe 40
Ian 29

Katy’s 54 score being a tie for highest score. A title she shares with Joe, Martin and Gonz.

It was now 11.40 and no sign of any need for a little game as a night cap. Certainly not for me, having long ago run out of alcohol and relying on the kindness of Katy and Joe to keep me feulled.

What an evening. Lords of Vegas, complete with appropriate music, was an event as always. But Katy was unstoppable: Lords of Vegas was her fourth win in a row.

Here’s the Division for the season so far...

And here’s the Division for Lords of Vegas...

(Sorry, Ben. Lost the first letter of your name, and am too lazy to make a new one.)

Gameathon

Thursday night saw my (Chris) old board gaming world in Bracknell and beyond meet my new one in Chippenham. A long over due visit from Paul coincided with my semi regular Thursday games session here in my relocated home. Paul was here early this time so an afternoon of games beaconed after we got the perfunctory nuisance of lunch out of the way.

First up saw Jacquie join us in a couple of games of Heck Meck. This recent purchase of mine has seen a lot of activity in the household since I tentatively asked my understanding wife to indulge me in a game. Subsequently, it seems, I now never win a game and that vein continued for the two matches we managed before she had to rush off and collect the kids.

Jacquie 11
Paul 7
Chris 0

Jacquie 12
Chris 7
Paul 6

With the kitchen table to ourselves I then convinced Paul to take me on at 5 Tribes. Sam off loaded this to me a little while ago but I hadn't got to play it yet. As documented before in these fair pages its a simple enough game to learn but quite a brain burner to play. I didn't think too much about my strategy and picked up what ever looked good whereas Paul collected goods cards. Toward the end of the game I was nervously eying his colossal stack knowing how much they could score. Unfortunately due to a misunderstanding of how the multipliers worked he had collected a fair few of the same card and thus negated his advantage.

Chris 245
Paul 169

Then Paul was whisked away for Lego duties with the kids whilst dinner was being prepared and even though the general melee of kids bedtime then ensued we still manufactured enough time to play Nations the Dice Game. Again, possibly, a new title to Paul but this didn't hold him back squeezing in a very neat final round by scoring heavily on famine and war where I narrowly missed out.

Paul 27
Chris 23

Shortly after this was packed away my gaming buddies from Chippenham (Paul H and Stuart) arrived for an evening of laying cards, pushing cubes, making bids and pretending to be a medieval sheriff. After some introductions and quick laugh about there being two Pauls, we got down to it.

The general consensus was many quicker games rather than one big one. A kinda schedule was drawn up with Pairs getting its first airing for the collective. I'm not sure if the rules we play are actually the right ones but it doesn't seem to matter because the objective is met. A quick, light, fun jaunt to get the gaming muscles warmed up. In this bout Paul H calculated his winning position very well by sticking when he was assured of enough points.

Paul H 21
Stuart 16
Chris 16
Paul J 15

Next to the table was King of Tokyo. The remarkable part of Paul H's win in this game was the lack  of visits to Tokyo he made. This many have been instigated by the 5 damage whacking he got from me in his first foray to the bright lighted city. However, three strong rounds in a row which saw him collect 13 points was enough to see him slip in to first place with Paul J narrowly missing out on his turn.

Paul H 20
Paul J 19
Chris 12
Stuart 10

The bits had barely been stuffed back in to their box when 7 Wonders was being decanted and arranged. The first game of the night where nobody needed a rules refresher. Well nearly. This game still causes a memory black spot for Paul J even though he's been playing it on and off for 6 years!

Didn't prove to be much of a hinderance though as he squeaked past me and wrapped up first place. The game was notable for the lack of any cloth which I discovered late into the second era. This threw the proverbial spanner into the machinery of my careful devised plans and meant I couldn't build my last wonder. Shame.

Paul J 46
Chris 45
Paul H 42
Stuart 33

See...No cloth.

Then it was Kingdom Builders turn to be hastily arranged on the table. Stuart absorbed the quick rules explanation like a boss and was playing within 5 minutes. It was here that I managed to catch a bit of luck. My long and winding civilisation finally meeting up to make one large settlement area to take advantage of the citizen scoring card and score big

Chris 62
Paul H 50
Stuart 40
Paul J 37

By now the beers had been sampled to an appropriate level to bring out Sheriff of Nottingham. Nobody really stood out as a particularly good liar but with Paul J, the eventual winner, it was possible that his nursing of a single bottle of ale may have aided his decision making processes. Who knows?

Paul J 205
Stuart 153
Chris 138
Paul H 105

With the late hour approaching there was just enough time for a 13 point game of Push It. Paul J's 'technique' of blasting the pucks to the four corners of the table may need some work as his final score of minus 3 bares testament to a bit of jack abuse.

Chris 13
Paul H
Stuart 7
Paul J -3

And at that we called it a night. I'm not sure we could have squeezed any more games into the evening. What a corker.

Micro Wave

The last night of my marathon three-and-half weeks of gaming almost-every-night began with Stanley, Joe and I playing Micro Robots. This is a spin-off (I think) of Ricochet Robots, which I've never played (or wanted to) but it sounded like a fun thing to do with the boys.



The board is laid out randomly and dice are rolled to determine a starting position (certain colour, certain number) and end position (likewise). If you play the game properly (we just worked as a team), then everyone works out in their head how to get the 'robot' from one to the other - you can move orthogonally to a matching colour, or a matching number. If you can do it you announce how many moves you can do it in, and then - theoretically - prove it.

Both boys liked it and Joe - who often insists on playing in a 'team' with me - really came into his own, figuring things out quicker than Stan or I a couple of times.

So come 7.45 I introduced the game to Andrew, who also seemed enamored. It's more puzzle than game, really - the game aspect is the race to work out the puzzle - but rather sweet nonetheless.

Moments later Adam walked in, and with very little discussion, we set up Scythe. It was new to Adam but having taught it to a few people recently, we sped through the introduction and began the game. As ever, there is no combat in the early stages, but as the first to get my mechs out beyond my own territory, Andrew and Adam started talking as if there would be.

My special power was being able to take the same actions as many times in a row as I liked (usually, you have to change action on every turn) and it did come in handy. I ran away from Adam in order to complete my goal card, and travelled far and wide claiming the Encounter tokens. But my success was partly down to Adam's lack of familiarity with Scythe - he forgot his special power of stealing combat cards before a fight. Had he remembered, our two vital face-offs could have ended differently. As it was, I stole all his lumber and then successfully fought him off late-game having hinted I wasn't going to bother.

As a result I'm not sure how much Adam enjoyed it, but hopefully he's intrigued enough to try it again before too long. I do like this game.

Sam 62
Adam 38
Andrew 32

Andrew would have finished second except, not realizing the game was about to end, he vacated the Factory hex and let me steal in at the death.

Because of Scythe's delightful brevity it was not yet 10pm, so we broke out Take It Easy. We also broke out the cheese and biscuits too, and discovered Adam's dislike of olives (not at all) and indifference to grapes (I think he ate about three). Andrew and I stuffed our faces like the gannets we are.

Then Andrew launched into round one of Take it Easy, calling Beatles songs. There was nary a pause from his encyclopedic memory, but he did cry "this is terrible" very early on: on his fifth tile. That has to be a record. My efforts at calling words ending with 'ology' only lasted as far as cosmology, theology and biology before I sidestepped into psychiatry, trigonometry etc, before eventually saying anything that ended with an 'ee' sound: easy, doozy, floozy, etc.

Pathetic! But at least I won.



Finally we tried our hand at FUSE. I'm not sure if I dealt out too many cards again, but it felt nigh-on impossible. We ran out of time with five cards still in the stack - although four of them were Fuse cards. I would have been up for another stab at it, but time was a-pressing, so our evening came to an explosive close.

Thank you for your time, gentlemen!

Appetite for Construction

The last few days - and evenings - of Sally's prolonged absence are now upon me, and I decided to see them out in much the same way I started them - by playing games to what to most people would be an obsessively unhealthy degree. But I'm not most people, and neither is Chris.

We sat down last night having set up Caverna, braced for the long haul. But of course, Caverna is only a long haul with four (or three, if Ian or Steve play) and we zipped through it nippily enough. Chris needed a couple of rule-reminders, but overall didn't seem too rusty. Three-quarters of the way through the game I saw that whilst my mountain was nearly dug, his was still the Dwarf equivalent of a embryonic maisonette. But any confidence I had evaporated as his plans seemed to coalesce over the last couple of rounds to facilitate some hectic building.

stuff

I held on for the win, but it was closer than I'd suspected it would be.

Sam 70
Chris 56

It was only half nine, so we had the option of taking on another Euro-y game. But Chris suggested Cosmic Run, and I'm never going to turn that down. Not after just playing Caverna, anyway.

matter

I decided to pick up cards if I could, rather than ignore them, and did pay notional heed to that intent. But it's hard to ignore those tracks when the dice-rolling is good... whilst Chris seemed to pick up cards at every given opportunity, I only ended up with three in the fastest game of Cosmic Run I've yet played:

Sam 69
Chris 62

It was 10pm now and I was pretty tired, but agreed to one more game: FUSE, the game of co-operative bomb defusal. If anyone hasn't played this, it's a high-pressure hoot; the game lasts ten minutes exactly (unless you win, in which case it might be less) during which time you're trying to 'defuse' cards by placing dice on them of a certain colour, number, or combination thereof. We didn't realise I'd dealt too many bomb cards in the first game and exploded like amateurs snipping wires randomly. But the game had woken me up, so we went again, this time with the correct amount of cards... we dallied with doing the easier 'training' mission, before going for the standard one - and we did it! With literally ten seconds to spare. 

Art and Kraft

It was a rather sparse Tuesday again this week, with GNN stalwarts Andrew and Ian both absent, and Adam unable to make it despite actually hosting. Hannah welcomed us into their abode: Katy, Martin, Joe, and myself (Sam).

Not realizing there'd only be five of us I'd brought Scythe as an option, but my only response was a mere sniff of disdain from Martin, who couldn't even rouse himself to a withering verbal assessment. Fatherhood is clearly taking it out of him.

Instead after a short discussion we played Reiner Knizia's classic of auctioning horrendous paintings: Modern Art. I had last played this game literally about 15 years ago, possibly longer, so I needed a rules refresher. Basically you have art, you sell art, when the market gets flooded with a certain painter the round ends and paintings are worth money depending on their popularity.

Yoko rips off Lichtenstein

There's more to consider than first appears - because the round ends instantly once a fifth painting by the same painter is put up for auction (that auction doesn't even happen) you're juggling what paintings you collect with what paintings you have in your hand with what paintings other people are collecting with what paintings they might have in their hand - along with the accrued value of each painter, as their worth can increase over subsequent rounds if they've been popular previously.

Christian P is all the rage

As it turned out, I was a terrible juggler. Perhaps I'm naturally too cautious, as I never wanted to pay too much for a painting. The fact they all look horrid doesn't help. Martin, despite his insistence that he was rubbish at it, seemed to lurch into action in the last two rounds like a latter-day Frankenstein art dealer, suddenly realizing (or perhaps realizing his plan) that he needed to buy some art.

Although Joe said Charlotte has won the game in their house before by only selling art.

Martin 399
Joe 369
Hannah 324
Katy 310
Sam 300

With that slightly long 'filler' done and dusted, we moved on to another game that was new to me - Mamma Mia. It's a very untypical Rosenberg game of effectively warring chefs scrabbling over pizza ingredients that have been thrown into a massive pile. Chuck some ingredients in, then add a recipe if you think when everything is revealed later, there'll be all the ingredients you need underneath your pizza to bake it. Baking: points.

half-baked

I tried to complete my pepperoni pizza first, but hoping to pick up pepperoni cards didn't work. Then I tried to throw a recipe in the deck and pick up pepperoni after the event (to add from my hand later) but that didn't work either. Basically I picked up a lot of jalapeños and olives, when I needed other stuff. So to me it felt rather luck-dependent, but clearly the others were finding their way around it:

Katy 6 (wins on tie-breaker)
Martin 6
Joe 5
Hannah 2
Sam 1

Despite my shabby showing I enjoyed both games, Mamma Mia particularly.

The hour was still relatively early but with almost everyone present now a parent we elected to call it a night. The early season leaderboard will show that Martin and Katy remain the sharks in the GNN water, while my Tuesday night form remains resolutely in the doldrums.

Harvest for the World

Scythe hasn't been out of the cupboard for a couple of weeks, so when Chris suggested it last night Andrew and I were amenable.

The box and components make this look a heavy game, but as we remarked approvingly last night, it plays very quickly. Each player represents a faction trying to become the dominant culture in an alternate Europe, but rather than just fight each other you're also trying to win over the local populace to your point of view - you might dominate the landscape, but if your opponents have made themselves more appealing to the locals, you won't win the game.

Each player starts with a faction board that has four 'slots' on it, with a top and bottom action. On your turn, you choose a slot and take either one or both of the available actions. The top actions: Move and Produce get you momentum on the board/resources from workers, Bolster improves your military might and Trade lets you pay money for resources. The bottom actions allow you to Build buildings, Enlist troops to your cause, Deploy a mech (which, unlike your production-minded workers, can fight for you) or Upgrade: making your top actions more profitable and your bottom actions cheaper to achieve.

Me

So you're expanding on the map and aiming, at first, to stay out of each other's way whilst you try and improve the virtual cards in your hand. Like Eclipse, combat becomes a more common by-product - or even just a product - towards the end of the game, when winning or losing can be crucial. However, losing a fight is not as punitive as in Eclipse, and indeed winning one can make your popularity suffer. So whilst the game encourages some aggression, you need to choose your battles.

Stanley loves it and we'd recently played it three times on holiday, and once when his Warhammer-playing pal Theo came over (competitive dad won that one). I love it too - it plays far quicker than Eclipse and is much easier to explain to newbies. Like another favourite, Caverna, turns (usually) feel productive and there's room for Plans B and C. My only criticism is the fact players can magically ping around the board as a result of certain powers (and the mines) kind of breaks up the theme slightly. But then again, in Wallenstein combatants hurl themselves into a giant tower, and in Eclipse you can ignore some of the universe and throw it away... so I think we can handle that minor idiosyncrasy.

Andrew having fun

Not sure what Chris is having

What I really like about Scythe is that there's a story to it - encounter tokens are liberally placed around the board at the start, and interacting with these allows you to make choices - they're always productive, but you can make them especially so and sacrifice your reputation (i.e. lose popularity!) or take the less alluring options and improve your reputation instead.

Several objectives allow you to place a Star to show you've achieved it - the moment any players places their sixth star, the game ends - although as I have found to my cost before, the player ending the game won't necessarily win it.

In the event, Chris found that knowing it slightly better worsened his game - possibly he thought too much? - as Andrew and I charged ahead. I focused on getting my buildings down and enlisting everyone I could - both give you ongoing bonuses for the rest of the game. My faction's special power was to take two options from the Encounter cards, so I travelled the board as far as I could maximising this - and inadvertently turding on Chris - twice - when I found myself stranded in his territory and had to fight my way out. I triggered the game end and took a solid win:

Sam  93
Andrew 62
Chris 23

With the time only 9.30pm, there was a multitude of options open to us. "Something that lasts half an hour!" Andrew said. "Forty-five minutes" Chris countered.

We played Cosmic Run. This is such a fun filler, but I'm starting to wonder if the recipe for success will always be the same. I ignored the alien cards early on and just pushed myself up the planet tracks; as we've found in the past, that seems to lead to the win - and so it was in this case.

Sam 69
Chris 42
Andrew 39

The alien cards are a lot of fun, but are they busted? Probably not, and this is just a random cluster of track-rewarding by fate. We'll see what happens next time.

Andrew called it a night and Chris and I had a quick run at Keltis: The Dice Game, the most challenging part of which - for me - was assembling the four-piece board, much to Chris' amusement. "It's double-sided!" I protested, with some (minor) justification. I got my revenge in the game itself when despite getting confused over which colour we were - in a two player game - I managed to nab the win by a few points.

Nice way to end the weekend, thanks chaps.