Major Improvement

Lucifer and all his little underling devils must have been pacing around the underworld this morning puffing out lungfuls of condensation and staring quizzically at the thermometer because last night I think Hell must have frozen over.

It was a Saturday night and I was expecting to be watching some of the poor fare served up by the terrestrial networks when Jacquie asked me "Did I want to play a game? Do you think I'll like Agricola?". Probably not was my first thought, remembering the time we almost got divorced over a Roll Through the Ages rules explanation. But there it was, a golden opportunity..... Apparently the cast of Orphan Black had been playing it in one of the episodes and it had peaked her interest. So set it up on the kitchen table and agreed that if at any point she was hating it we would stop, also that we would take the first game as a training game....

Proof

Anyway its Sunday evening and we've had four games of it already, the last one with the cards. This is such an unlikely event I had to blog it.

At a table for one

This week, while several GNNers are off having a games festival in Ilfracombe, I was cat-sitting for Sam. This gave me a chance to try some of the single player versions of recent favourites.

I began on Friday evening with Viticulture. This game has been a big hit recently, but how would the game stand up away from the thrust and parry of real opponents?

Unfortunately, not too well. The method used to place your opponents workers is to draw a card at the start of summer or winter and place workers accordingly. Since the game uses a two-player set up this means certain spaces will be unavailable, unless you use your grande.

With these obstacles in the way, the game gives you seven rounds to beat twenty points. I managed it (got to twenty-five) but it didn’t feel that satisfying. It lacked a certain something.

Then on Saturday morning, I broke out Caverna. Recently, this has been the go-to game for Agricola-style worker placement since it avoids the most stressful part of Agricola, trying to feed your family.

Well, in the single player game, that part is back: every round after round five is a harvest! This can cause some serious issues with AP.

Also, and this is the clever bit, when a space has six resources on it, it will reset at the start of the next round. When I read that rule I thought, fair enough, I’ll just wait until it is full and then take it. The trouble is, by that time, I had other plans in motion and the idea of using a go just to pick up lots of stuff seemed like a waste.

The cards for the later rounds are always in the same order, so the game can play out the same way each time, if you do the same things. I got to 59, but the rules suggest that 100 is possible. I’d love to know how. Anyway, this is an excellent version of Caverna and one that really captures what’s so good about the main game.

My board at the end of the game

Finally, on Saturday evening, I went the full Matt Damon and played Terraforming Mars. Now, this must be mankind’s second attempt at colonising the red planet, because the game begins with two cities and two bits of greenery already on the board. After that, you have 14 rounds to achieve all three game-ending criteria.

Blimey. 45 credits and +/-2 on criteria

I enjoyed it, but found my progress rather slow. When round fourteen was over, I’d barely got halfway to each of the end-game targets. Perhaps I haven’t played it enough to know how the cards work together, but it seems like a tough assignment to beat.

Let's science the shit out of this!

It's all getting a bit I'm The Boss

Plenty of production power

But not enough time to make it pay.

So, anyway, that was my weekend. Disappointed by Viticulture, delighted by Caverna and still undecided on Terraforming Mars.

Flower Power

Thursday evening saw myself (Chris), Paul H and Stuart gather, if three people can do that, at my house for another session of gaming. To aid the decision making process I suggested that Paul be the one choosing  the table top encounters for the night. Keyflower was proffered as something he’d wanted to try for a while and I disappeared off to get it before he changed his mind.

Keyflower is not to everybody’s tastes as it can seem more tactical than strategic. The iconography and art can be seen as obtrusive and unattractive and it can be a problem for the AP prone player. However it is one of my favourites, and I'll never turn down a game of it. Its central mechanism whereby you have to decide whether to use your meeples on production and upgrading of tiles or for bidding to gain additional ones adds a unique aspect to the game. I tend to prefer games where you make your plans up on the fly and react to emerging situations. This one almost insists that you do as you get out bid for village tiles and players use production spaces you had your eye on.

 

Forgot to take a photo. Here's one I made earlier

The chaps took on board the rules rather well and we were up and bidding in no time. To help the easing of their first game I made a number of suggestions which, unless you’ve played before, could be easily missed. To their credit these were few and far between. A testament to how successfully they had picked it up was reflected in the final scores.

Chris 54

Paul 53

Stuart 51 – (Although this could be more. I neglected to score the first player marker which is used as a general wild card!)

Keyflower had taken a little longer than expected so we rounded of the evening with a game of 7 Wonders. Well two actually. As with many people before them this has become a firm favourite with the guys. In the first game Paul showed us how to play the game as Giza by focussing on resources to build his wonders and at the same time buying every blue building he could.

In the second game he observed how I had played Alexandria in the first game by focussing on one science and using the 2^nd wonder to improve the score. Then showed us how to win by using that tactic. Really well!

Paul 54

Chris 49

Stuart 38

Paul 67

Stuart 45

Chris 39

Mechs and the single girl

...With an eagle on her arm. But more about Scythe later.

This week’s games night began as a sparse affair. Just Sam (host), Katy and myself meeting up at half seven. With the promise of Ian and Adam at around 8.30, what should we play to fill the fifty-seven minutes or so (after we’d dispensed with the chit-chat)? We decided Istanbul would be a game that would test our minds and also fit easily into that time.

If only Sam and I had known quite how easily...

While we busied ourselves with building up our wheelbarrows, Katy shuffled between the black market and the palace, slowly getting gems. Then she sped off towards the gem dealer, with plenty of cash in reserve. Then Sam realised she had a “gem dealer times two” card and was about to end the game. And there wasn’t anything we could do to stop her.

Sam's wheelbarrow

And Katy's

Katy 5 gems
Sam 3 plus cash tie-breaker
Andrew 3

So with the spare time, Katy suggested Deep Sea Adventure. And with no one to say that it was the wrong number of players, Sam and I agreed. We dove, collected, returned to the submarine. Well, Sam did. Katy and I died an early death in round one.

Then Adam arrived, so we instantly included him in the roster, and a little yellow man was added to the crew while Adam was still taking his shoes off. We didn’t think he’d mind starting on zero since, in this case, he was still joint second.

Adam died in round two, while the rest of us got back safely. Then in round three, Sam (clearly winning) simply loaded himself up with treasure, used up all the oxygen and so we all expired.

Sam 23
Andrew 11
Katy 8

And Adam got no points at all, but I can’t put him on the leaderboard since he wasn’t there/paying attention for about fifty percent of the game.

With Ian on the way, we decided to go crazy and give Scythe a go. Katy was the only person who hadn’t played it, so Sam went through the rules.

By the end, Ian had arrived and got settled while Katy looked decidedly unsettled at what lay before her.

I was Nordic something, the blue tribe and a recent favourite. Adam wanted to be yellow but was sitting in the wrong place and had to make do with red. Katy was black, Ian white, Sam yellow.

With five players, there’s a lot less space on the board and, as you’d expect, more fighting. Six battles raged over the course of the game. Movement was fraught with dangers and the encounters apparently at more of a premium. Sam happily took two points off his popularity, ploughing through two of my workers to get to the last on the board.

Adam spread out, slowly but steadily, a veritable red menace. Sam remained concentrated near his base. Katy sighed as she tried to get her head around the rules. Ian also bemoaned his lot, stuck almost exclusively in his three opening hexes. With no metal to make mechs, he spent a lot of time repeating the same actions.

As the game progressed, so Katy became more proficient and Ian got out, by using a mine. Adam took control of the centre hex. Sam spread out and I became hemmed in, stuck behind Sam’s, Ian’s and Adam’s forces, and mostly sulking in the lakes by the end of the game.

Adam finally triggered the end of the game by producing his eighth worker, and getting a sixth star. The scoring produced a surprise for everyone, with Ian coming in first, despite having never built a single mech. How this analogue, tech-free lifestyle ever worked, we’ll never know.

Ian 73
Sam 64
Adam 58
Katy 41
Andrew 38

With the hour just past eleven, we packed up and set off.

Katy leads the Division for Medal Table and Points, while Ian’s win at Scythe propels him into first in Points Ratio.

Pork Scything

Saturday. Just before Ian and Andrew appeared at the door at 7.30 the boys debated what to play. With surprisingly little stress, Spyfall was chosen. We set up around the table, and after a few moments of exploratory questioning, I wrongly accused Andrew of being the spy - it was Little Joe. Then Stanley, as the spy, correctly guessed our location. Two-nil to the spies! Finally the non-spies won a round when Andrew outed himself but got the location wrong.

The boys were packed off to bed whilst Andrew and I did our best Derren Brown impressions in order to get Ian to play Terraforming Mars. Andrew even managed to get him to open the box and unfold the board. Then I lobbed in rules-explanation hand-grenade.... would he? Could he...?

Our NLP expertise still needs work. However our lust for exploring and resource-management was sated by the setting up of Scythe. I can't get enough of this game; for some reason it really pushes my buttons. Ian had a quick rules-refresher and we were off! Despite it only being his second play Ian's early showing was strong, as he was first to get a mech out and begin exploring the landscape.

But though there are many paths to victory in this game, you make yourself unpopular at your peril. Ian's ability to take two options on Encounter cards, and the temptation to take the most powerful (and unpopular) ones kept him languishing in the doldrums of the proletariat's estimation, whilst Andrew and I courted them rather more graciously. Whilst Andrew populated the south with his seemingly-Catholically-minded workers, I spread my workers far and wide, encouraged by their ability to swim.

Outside the world of the game, we opened up Ian's bag of pork scratchings and Andrew announced he could feel the consumption of each piece shaving minutes off his life.  I made my way to the Factory and then triggered the game end by getting my last two stars down in one turn.

Sam 75
Andrew 48
Ian 33

As Scythe was packed away we decided on its' polar opposite in gaming terms: Push It. This is always fun, and especially so when everyone is high on pork. Fantastically awful flicks seemed to be the predominant feature, but Ian seemed to be the person most in control of himself:

Ian 11
Sam 7
Andrew 4

We followed this with Love Letter. This is one of Ian's go-to games in terms of results, but Andrew's astonishing telepathy was what decided it. Of his five guards played in three rounds, four of them guessed correctly:

Andrew 3
Sam 1
Ian 0

Andrew went ti get the next game, and returned with this mysterious bulb

"What kind of game is that?" he asked in dismay.

We played Take it Easy. I began calling different types of cheese, and ran out after about fifteen of them, calling simply "cheese" each tile for the remainder. Andrew and Ian didn't seem bothered. And cheese seemed to be rather lucky for me, as I replicated my recent score of 222! Andrew then called things he used to have on VHS, giving us rare insight into his oft-concealed psyche - as well as his age. "You remember that!" he cried to Ian, who looked blank. Ian called video games that had a pivotal impact on him. I didn't realise there were so many. It was like someone talking in latin...

Sam 532
Andrew 463
Ian 375

Finally we bashed through a game of Micro Robots. This is hard enough after a strong coffee, but with all of us now in the Saturday night vibe, it took a humungous effort to focus our brains. My training sessions with the kids paid off, though, as I managed to pick up the win.

We made plans to force Ian to terraform soon, then called it a night.

Terra Visions

Last night Andrew, Chris and I sat down to play Terraforming Mars, the big hit at Essen this year. Would it stand up to scrutiny? Because scrutiny is Chris' middle name - he'd prepared for the game intensively, as his clarifications to my rule explanations revealed. I'd watched a couple of reviews and Andrew had done no prep at all. From the get-go we were slightly concerned that Chris seemed to know his Martian onions.

But to the game itself: as the name suggests, players are in the act of turning Mars from a barren wasteland into a garden teeming with life. At the start, we've only just arrived and are merely cracking our corporate knuckles. Then we begin building cities, aquifying oceans and cultivating greenery. When the temperature and oxygen levels reach a certain (habitable) point, and all nine ocean tiles have been placed, the game will end.

early Mars, as seen by Andrew

Meantime we are buying project cards (3 money per pop) and then activating them (variable costs) to either do stuff on the planet itself (the aforementioned terraforming) or bump up your productivity: all players have their own corporate mats that generate money, metal, plant life and energy at the start of each round. You can turn that plant life into greenery hexes and use that energy to heat up the planet. Both reward you with points. You can also spend actions to claim milestones (for stuff you've done) or pay for awards (for stuff you hope to do, or have done and don't want to be out-done). Because of the variety of cards, and the fact you can take either one or two actions on your turn - there's a lot to think about.

energy

Chris surged into an early lead and stayed there. Andrew paid money every round to look for life, and never found it. I generated lots of energy and heat, but kept forgetting I could pay for my expensive cards by using metal rather than money, even though the whole structure of my final round was based on doing so. However even if I'd remembered, I wouldn't have caught Chris, who was decreed the best Terraformer by a very respectable margin:

Chris 80?
Sam 69
Andrew 50something

the vague scores are based on what I remember, and the tantalizing image below.

Andrew's cube hidden top left, Chris' hidden top right

Including rules explanation to Andrew we'd terraformed Mars in just under three hours. Not bad if the human race is ever in trouble, but rather long for a board game. I would hope that play-time is going to drop significantly, as although I enjoyed it a lot, three hours is a bit long for me.

We decided on a quick palette-cleanser to finish on, and busted through a three round game of tournament Raj. I won every round, but the game was most notable for mine and Chris' habit of playing the same card on the negative tiles, ensuring poor Andrew picked them up no matter what tactic he went for:

Sam 84
Chris 45
Andrew 10

And then we played Micro-Robots! My boys love this game of quickly-figuring-out the way to get the robot from one space to another, but it's not for everyone. Chris watched the whole game in silence, broken only once in order to get his move fractionally wrong. "I'm never playing that again!" he announced at the end, in the manner of a man who has better things to do (i.e. terraforming Mars).

Sam 5
Andrew 3
Chris 0

Verdict on Terraforming Mars from me was that it felt like a winner, but one that needed Raj played after it. It's more interactive than it first appears too, as you can beat each other to the punch on numerous things, and even blow each others' resources up! I need to play again soon.

Dirky Chancing

Games at Joe’s. Not an affair for the faint hearted. Genial Joe’s hospitality is a trap, designed to keep people enthralled until long after their bed time, high on dice and towers and cards. This is exactly what got the tippling houses of Victorian England closed down in the Great Gaming Purge of 1867 (possibly made up).

During the day, it had looked like there’d be six in attendance, and Joe got excited about the prospect of playing Captain Sonar. However, perhaps Joe’s excitement was contagious, because in the end there were nine of us. We said that someone is bound to go home early, and then we can play it with eight.

Anyway, after a remarkably long time in deciding what to play we settled on Junk Art (for Ben, Joe, Katy, Sam Matt and, eventually, Martin) and Kingdom Builder (for Ian, Andy and me).

You couldn’t ask for two more different games. Junk Art prompted gales of laughter and curses against fate, which Kingdom Builder couldn’t compete against. Even the sight of two opposing scoring cards (one for large settlement areas and one for small settlements) couldn’t raise more than a wry chuckle.

In Kingdom Builder I went for one big settlement areas, Ian went for small and Andy went somewhere in the middle. It was a close game, with me just sneaking into the lead thanks to being next to cities.

Andrew 55
Andy 50
Ian 42

By now, Junk Art had ended with Ben a clear winner and Katy’s dream of a perfect fifth win in a row was in tatters.

Ben 12
Joe 9
Sam 9
Matt 8
Katy 6
Martin 2

They had begun a game of Team Play and so once we’d finished Kingdom Builder, we set up Forbidden Desert. This team game of survival and escape from a desert wracked by storms is Andy’s new acquisition (from Sam) and it didn’t take a huge amount of rules-refreshing before we were back in the fray.

We started off okay, with Ian excavating whenever he could, while I climbed over the huge banks of sand that kept building up. If only I’d done something while I was up there. Andy also excavated when he could, but accidentally uncovered a well when he was on his own, meaning that we’d exhausted all out water supplies. It was just a case of how long we could hang on.

I find the power supply. Mmm, how it glows!

Well, we were able to hang on for longer than it takes to play a game of Team Play.

That ended:

Martin & Matt 24
Katy & Joe 20
Ben & Sam 18

And they embarked on a game of For Sale:

Sam 51
Joe 48
Katy 46
Martin 44
Matt 43
Ben 37

And by now the terrible news was in: I died of thirst in the desert and our fate was sealed.

Never mind.

Next, since we were all together, some kind of big party-ish game was called for. We went for a single round, sudden-death game of 6nimmt. Martin wasn’t keen, saying it was just a luck fest which might have had more weight were it not for the fact he was suggesting Pairs. We jokingly decided that whoever came last would have to go home and then the remaining eight could play Captain Sonar.

Since there was nine of us, it seemed a shame not to invite Dirk to make it up to a round ten players. Katy shuffled and dealt and we were off.

For such a short game, a lot of incidents were packed in. Katy played for herself and Dirk and there was some suspicion that she may have been passing her losses onto Dirk. Joe kept trying to have conversations, meaning he was usually late in choosing a card. This annoyed Katy such that she threw a couple of things at him. First a bit of food and then the 6nimmt box! These are the kind of emotions that 6nimmt can conjure up. By means of punishment, she’s listed at the bottom of the three-way tie for 15 points.

Andy 6
Sam 7
Ian 9
Matt 13
Ben 15
Andrew 15
Katy 15
Martin 18
Joe 28
Dirk 53

Anyway, with Joe being the last among real players, we joked that he now had to go home while the rest of us played Captain Sonar.

Instead, Sam and I departed. I rely on Joe’s email for the scores of the rest of the evening which stretched out until eleven o’clock.

Pairs

Katy 21
Martin 20
Matt 15
Ian 13
Andy 12
Joe 9
Ben 5

Then Ben left and we played Dead Man's Chest:

Katy won
Martin
Ian
Joe
Matt
Andy

Then Martin, Andy and Ian left, and we played Push It:

Katy 8
Matt 3
Joe 3

Then No Thanks:

Joe 45
Katy 51
Matt 72

And so to the Division: Katy leads, making a mockery of anyone else’s attempts at winning the medal table. She also has the highest points total, while I take Points Ratio by the thinnest of margins.

Oh, and after playing Team Play, people said what a pity it wasn't leaderboard because it's so much fun. You know, I think you guys may have a point!

Team Play Division