Rhino Knizia

Joe's studio, now fitted out with a full games collection and a heater under the table, began its life as a regular venue with eight gamers in attendance: Joe, Martin, Ian, Katy, Adam T, Sam, myself and the long-lost Matt, making a return to GNN for the first time in oooh ages.

I arrived shortly before seven, only to find the games had long since began. Ian, Adam, Sam and Joe had already played No Thanks and Pickomino. I was immediately dealt into a game of Botswana, a simple betting game where animals are shares and their final value is based on the number of the last card (0-5) played to that pile. In the first game, an early zero card had everyone picking up leopards since they were bound to score. Everyone except me.

Adam 16
Sam 13
Joe 12
Ian 11
Andrew 9

We played again and this time I ended with a far better range of animals. During the scoring, Sam appeared pleased with his improved score of 16 until everyone else announced their scores.

Andrew 22
Adam 18
Joe 18
Ian 17
Sam 16

After this, Martin, Matt and Katy arrived. We discussed our options. I had never played Babylonia, so that seemed likely to be chosen. Sam had brought Rurik: Dawn of Kiev. Martin seemed unimpressed, despite everyone always referring to it by its full name (instead of just calling it Rurik). Sam tried the soft sell on Katy by telling her she probably wouldn't like it but Matt might. But since she didn't want to play Babylonia, she was happy to join in.

Being so involved in my game, I couldn't tell you much about Rurik: Dawn of Kiev except that one of the figures looked like it was moonlighting from Scythe. Matt built a stronghold in the North and that seemed to help him on his way to a win.

Matt 21
Adam 14
Sam 14
Katy 13

In Babylonia, I quickly fell behind and stayed there. Any solace I might have got from having scored about the same as Joe was swept aside in the closing stages of the game when he clocked up some pretty major scores, almost edging an unlikely win.

Martin 167
Joe 161
Ian 151
Andrew 104

Martin would've scored more were it not for a patch of bad luck: he picked up a special tile that allowed him to trigger a certain bonus without having the regulation tiles. Little did he know that the rest of us just so happened to have the correct tiles and we all triggered them and removed them off the board for twenty points each. Finally, he admitted he may as well join in and got the final bonuses available for twenty points too.

Rurik: Dawn of Kiev was still mid game so we filled the time with a rousing game of Die Crew. It was Ian's first go so we eased him into with a nice training mission. One which we almost failed were it not for Joe (cruelly referred to as 'irrelevant' due to his lack of suitable cards) who worked out a method of success.

With this victory behind us, we carried on the space epic. This time we got hit by a couple of rocks from Saturn's rings and damaged the flux capacitor or something. We did it and before long the gamers at the other end of the table were trying to work out the best way to put Rurik: Dawn of Kiev back in its box, so we put space exploration on hold and waited until we were an octet once more.

We decided on Wavelength, the new darling of the GNN-o-sphere. We split into two teams: Katy, Martin, Matt and Ian against Joe, Adam, Sam and Andrew and we seemed to have cracked it. Katy had “good music/bad music” as her categories and she said “hip hop” (actually, she said “hippity hop”, which required clarification) which they got perfectly. I forgot we were on opposing teams, and I made a few useful interjections.

Then Adam had “Powerful/Powerless” and chose “the next leader of the Labour party”. Somehow, after some prevarication, we got it spot on again. This was followed by the first team almost guessing Matt’s “Harmless/Harmful” clue of Hunting Knife for three points. We’d been so successful that we were considering introducing the “Calze” rule from Perudo for those occasions when you think the other team is spot on. Odd, really, since we never allow that rule when playing Perudo.

It was close at first but slowly Katy’s team started to build up a lead. Martin’s response to “Person you could/couldn’t beat up” clue was “Stephen Hawking” giving them an easy four points. Then Ian had “Dog name/cat name” and said “Kitty”. Well, you can guess the score there.

Katy et al 16
Joe etc 11

A remarkable game, but once over people began to talk about leaving, despite it not even being eleven o’clock (but some people had started at six). Ian and Adam were set to leave and then a sudden offer of a lift from Sam for those of us heading north convinced Katy and myself to abandon the games for an easy ride home. Thanks for hosting and thanks to all for another splendid evening.

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?

We're all on the spectrum

Games at Sam's was the order of the day and seven of us gathered around his kitchen table for our weekly fix. Sam, Joe, Martin, Adam T, Ian, debutante Mark and myself.

I began with a slight faux pas, asking with disappointment who brought Karate Tomate with them, only to be told that Martin had brought it to sell to Mark. Luckily, my air of derision wasn't enough to ruin the deal.

We began with the exciting new game of Wavelength. So exciting, indeed, that I forgot to take a photo of it. The premise is basic. It is a team game and one player chooses a card with two opposing categories on it (ie, healthy/unhealthy) . They then spin a wheel that randomises where the "target" is in a semi circular area. Only they can see it, then they cover this semi circle and have to think of a word that will cause their team-mates to correctly guess where the target is, assuming that healthy and unhealthy represent the two extremes at either end of the spectrum.

Sam began with an excellent example of how the game can pan out. His categories were Ordinary / Extraordinary and he chose to say "radish". A fascinating clue and one that had Adam and Joe discussing how ordinary a radish may or may not be. As I recall the slight spiciness of radishes prompted them to conclude that it was somewhat extraordinary. But Sam had been trying to push them towards Ordinary.

It went on thusly with Joe's choice of "burger" for the categories "sandwich / not a sandwich" caused possibly more controversy than me saying "the Royal family" for "replaceable / irreplaceable."

Martin, Mark, Andrew, Ian 10
Adam, Sam, Joe 4 or something

Then we split into two groups, desiring something more substantial. Babylonia made another appearance, this time with Martin, Mark, Adam and Joe participating.

I know almost nothing about it apart from Martin's little home improvement job on the racks meant to hold up the tokens. He'd added little plastic feet so they were now high enough and the tokens didn't just flop out uselessly. His care and attention to the game was reflected in the result, with Mark posting a strong score for his first game.

Martin 185
Mark 163
Joe 134
Adam 132

Ian, Sam and I fell back on an old faithful: Quantum. We chose a small map and began with remarkably similar fleets of dice; 5-4-3, 5-4-3, 5-4-2.

It was a feisty game, with Sam's fleet whittled away to a single die at one point. I was able to engineer two turns where I got two advance cards at once, but even that wasn't enough to stop a stirling comeback from Sam, who put his last cube down by attacking us and getting his Dominance up to six.

Somehow red won this battle!

Sam no cubes left
Andrew and Ian, one cube left

While Quantum was finishing, the Babylonians whipped off a quick truncated game of L.A.M.A. which culminated in an astonishing final round that saw Joe and Adam pick up card after card after Martin and Mark had folded, only to play them and Joe ended up with exactly the same cards as he’d started with.

Martin 1
Joe 6
Adam 15
Mark 18

At this point was a brief reshuffle. Martin, Sam, Ian and Mark played Senators which kind of passed me by apart from Mark’s late surge up the scoretrack with a move that got him four senators just before the final war ended the game.

Martin 12
Sam 10
Mark 7
Ian 7

Joe, Adam and myself played 99, a trick taking game where you nominate how many tricks you’re going to win. However, to signify your bid, you have to use cards from your hand which, of course, changes how strong your hand is. Cunning.

It was a cakewalk for Joe who, despite his familiarity with the game, started the game only making a note of his scores and forgetting about ours. I came second only because of Adam’s bravado and optimistic bids flying back in his face and gifting points to his opponents.

Joe 160
Andrew 89
Adam 67

By now it was 10.30 and we were graced with perhaps the latest arrival at a games night as Katy came from a pub round the corner to join us in our closing stages. Adama and Mark went home at this point since neither live in Bristol and had a bit of a trek home. So the six of us played Wavelength again. The five who’d played before should perhaps have taken the time to explain the rules to Katy instead of just starting and assuming she’d pick it up as she went along. She did fine until it was her turn to give a clue. She saw the category (Stationary/Mobile) and then chose the word, before randomising the target. Meaning it was kind of a hopeless task. There was also a moment where things could’ve taken a bad turn when Sam’s category was “Rough / smooth” and Martin advised him not to say “my balls.” Instead, he said “my chin” which lead to a little touching to try and gauge it’s roughness. Very glad he didn’t say “my balls.”

Katy, Andrew, Sam 10
Ian, Martin, Joe not 10

Now that Katy knew what to do we allowed her another try with all of us guessing and, all credit to her, she got it bang on. Between “traditionally feminine” and “traditionally masculine” she said “football” and we got it spot on: perhaps the only four-pointer of the evening. And I remembered just in time to take a photo as it was being put away.

Then we set off into the unsettled evening weather. Thanks all for a great evening.

2020 Visions

In case anyone has missed us comparing notes, Martin and I have agreed to end 2020 with a net spend of zero on games: trades are allowed, and even purchases, as long as the money spent is raised by selling games.

Self-control is,  just perhaps, easier for Martin than I, but the handy thing about having no self-control up to this point is that I have several unplayed games to work through in the cupboard - a welcome distraction any time I see an alluring picture on Twitter.

That's why I finally played Gugong last week (Andrew and I were schooled by Adam and Katy) after it sat on a shelf for a year. (To be fair Andrew and I did get as far as setting it up one night but then Steve knocked on the door and we changed plans) But Adam and I enjoyed Gugong so much we played it again the very next night, and although I improved my score considerably... so did Adam.

Adam 53
Sam 35

I did at least have the satisfaction of beating him at Blitzkrieg! and Ankh'or afterwards. Blitzkrieg is a nifty chit-pull game where Axis and Allies fight over five theatres of war in WWII. Ankh'or is a set-collecting game where the sets can overlap. In each case however I'd had several previous plays to hone my skills. "This is what it's like playing Odin with you" I told Adam, when he frowned at my second victory.

On Friday, my last purchase of 2019 had arrived in the form of Rurik: Dawn of Kiev, and Ian and Adam rocked up to give it a whirl. On the board players fight for control of regions, tax regions, construct churches (flip opponents soldiers to your cause!) forts (defend better!) or markets (tax more!) in order to move up four point-scoring tracks: control of regions, buildings built, goods acquired and battles undertaken.

It's all surprisingly simple on the rules front, but implementation is something else: what the publisher calls auction programming. It does sound a bit of a stretch, admittedly, but I haven't encountered it before: players assign numbered workers to auction tracks that give you actions on the board (muster, move, attack, build, tax, or scheme: cards that give you extra actions) and higher-numbered workers will push lower-numbered workers down the track... But: lower numbered workers will activate first. This is a real puzzle and makes the auction almost as interactive as the board, as you can guess (or try to) opponent's plans and react accordingly. In fact there's a real sneakiness to proceedings that reminded me a little of Battle for Rokugan, albeit the mechanics are entirely different.

I was pleasantly surprised to win too: Adam and Ian probably gave me too much freedom in the north to build, and although I scored nothing for combat I was highest on two other tracks and it ended something like:

Sam 18
Adam 13
Ian 9

We finished the night with Push It - what can be said about this classic that hasn't already escaped our lips? Well, I could mention that I won.

Sam 11
Adam 10
Ian 9

And then, on Saturday, Wavelength arrived! This is has been long-anticipated; a party game co-designed by Wolfgang Warsch (The Mind) that I suspect we may play tomorrow night. Teams are trying to clue the location of a target on a spectrum between two extremes: the target's position is assigned randomly, and the spectrum changes with every turn: from simple concepts such as good/bad or hot/cold to more random things - there's even an advanced deck with things like Dictatorship/Democracy.

It seems like it could be a GNN favourite, and we put it through its paces yesterday when Sally and I played with some friends - all of us were enamoured of it. The spectrum categories can sometimes seem easy, sometimes hard, and it illuminates the differences in perceptions around the table. Both teams are involved in both rounds (the non-active team can win points off the potential inaccuracy of the active team's guess) and the whole thing is probably quicker than Just One. A winner!

I've been through the desert in a house with no games

The first "normal" games night of 2020 was hosted by Joe even though, in preparation for some house renovations, almost all of his collection is currently kept elsewhere. He was joined by Ian, Adam T, Adam H (who both arrived together raising worries of an alliance of Adams), Sam, Martin, Katy and myself. Martin had an aptly named beer: Game Theory and then broke the (already fragile) fridge handle.

After a shocking fifteen minutes of chat, we split into two groups. Adam T, Katy, Sam and me played Gugong, while the other four played Babylonia. The size of the two games was such that the kitchen table couldn't hold both, so Babylonia was built on the card table instead. This means that I have little idea of what went on except that Ian won after the other three players left him alone. The scores weren’t recorded, but Martin said he lost “really badly”.

After this they played Was Sticht, which ended

Martin 3
Ian 2
Adam 2
Joe 1

As for Gugong, Sam explained the rules and (barring one that he remembered soon after we began) it looks like he got them all. The game is worker-placement with a difference: they’re cards, not workers. And the value of the card you play has to be higher than the one that’s already in the space for a particular action (1s beat 9s, though). If you want to place a lower card, then you have to pay two worker cubes and since this’ll often be your only option, then you need to be careful to always have a healthy stock of workers available.

With all this talk over actions and workers, you’d expect Adam H to be good at it and so it proved to be. He swiftly got into the jade business before it got too expensive. I dd the same, but far too late. In the closing stages it was Katy versus Adam, with Adam’s jade bonus pushing him into a comfortable win. Sam and I must’ve been distracted by something. Possibly Sam's bottle of red wine that kept getting kicked over as people walked by.

Adam 47
Katy 40
Sam 24
Andrew 23

At this point Ian and Adam T left and the remaining six played Letter Jam. I'm afraid, just like last time, I was the one to let the team down. I thought my word was CHIPS but instead it was CHIRP. So my grand finale where I use two of the communal letters to make SAPPHIC was ruined when I revealed what should have been an S only for it to be an R. Every one else got their word, though, which meant we got 79 points and 3 strawberries.

Finally, with Katy and Adam departing, we ended on The Mind Extreme. We started well but then lost three lives in round four. Then we got through round five clear, leaving us with the task of facing round six with only one life left.

Somehow we made it. With a little creative interpretation of the rules: we lost a life, but also at the end of the round you gain a life, so we called it evens.

We then failed in round seven but since we’d already broken the rules once, we tried round eight anyway. Twice. The first time was probably the worst round of The Mind ever: the last card on one of the piles was a 20.Then in our second attempt we expertly cleared the white pile, ending in an unlikely 44, 45, 46, 47, 48. The red pile, however, failed immediately.

Having filled ourselves with all the gaming goodness we could hold, it was time to retire to bed. Thanks for the evening everyone. A good start to the year.

Party to Something

GNN started 2020 in celebratory mode, with an open-door policy at mine and Sally's house, and as well as the usual massively-unhealthy snacks there was also the marginally-safer ones of crostini and tapenade, courtesy of Sally. There was also mackerel pate, a variety of cheeses, cloudy lemonade, and a bowl of salad that - as Martin noted nine hours later, slowly turned into a bowl of wilted leaves.

still lurking this morning

But before that could happen, Adam T and Celena were first to arrive, promptly joined by Martin, Sarah and Effie. After summing up the options, Effie left the adults to it and went to chill with Stan and Joe. Arthur joined her when he rocked up with Hannah (who came by bus), and then shortly after that Adam H arrived on two wheels. Then Joe walked in too.

But for a long time - literally, hours! - people talked. It almost reached the point where the blog would need to be renamed, but fortunately Andy Mosse arrived with his boy Finn, and brought Team 3 with him. After it sat glowing radioactively for long enough on the table, the collective curiosity of myself, Martin, the Adams and Joe couldn't be resisted any more and with Andy's help we cracked out a quick couple of plays.

The game takes the concept of see/hear/speak no evil and parcels out those communicative restrictions on three team-mates, one of whom must describe the structure they have to build (from tetris-type blocks) whilst not speaking. The second must communicate the message verbally to the third, who can't see anything. It can be played co-operatively or competitively, and our second game was the latter, with Andy, Joe and Adam H beating Martin, Adam T and myself. Maybe it was the combination of hosting, or too much cloudy lemonade, but I found it very stressful.

Later - I think it was later - Ian arrived, and as the daylight began to fail, so did Steve and Anja with Louie and Lennon. Whilst the older kids disappeared to the loft to watch Pixels, the younger crew stayed in the front room with more suitable viewing, as we were all charmed by Lennon distributing snacks, often directly into our mouths. By this point there were two rooms full of potential gamers. In the front room, Sally and I joined Adam, Hannah, Steve, Anja for what turned out to be a triumphant crack at Just One - not only scoring the maximum 13 but 2 bonus points as well. which is even more impressive considering the game probably took about an hour all told.

Meanwhile in the kitchen there was an epic game of Facecards playing out. It took even longer than Just One, so God knows what took place. Everyone seemed very happy with it though.

As the day faded away, so did the 'non-gamers' with various children and relieved parents making their way home so the regular GNNers could go full-nerd. Sally had nowhere to go, but seemed happy to stay. To be frank the order of events gets extremely hazy here, I think due to all the cheese I was eating, but I think this was when a huge game of 7 Wonders got played.

Andy Mosse had only played 7 Wonders Duel, but was otherwise new to things, and initially had Joe beside him as his trusty assistant. But then I stole Joe away to play two games of Blitzkrieg! which we won one apiece and celebrated in our joint mutual destruction. I think Martin won 7 Wonders, after which Adam and Celena departed... in the front room, Sally taught Steve and Anja Yokai. I'm not sure how they got on, but after the first game Sally was ashen-faced in the kitchen, muttering something about rules.

Somewhere around here Res Arcana got played.

I think it was while Adam, Katy - freshly arrived - Ian and I played Flamme Rouge. As we were setting it up, Chris walked in the door - passing Steve and Anja en famille on the way out - and happily sat down to join us. A while ago Flamme Rouge was a regular at the GNN tables, and it was nice to play it again even if the card system initially seems slightly counter-intuitive. I've personally found that the backs of all cards are the same colour a little bewildering, even if it's necessary to hide those exhaustion cards...

While we were pedalling through the Alps, a boisterous Medium was played out at the other end of the table, with much roaring of disbelief and approbation. I've no idea which team won, but they wrapped things up the same time as Adam H sailed over the line in Flamme Rouge.

I'm now exceedingly hazy on things but I think it was towards the end of these games that Andrew and Anna arrived to find a scene of game-related debauchery in full swing. Stan and Joe were so screened out they were taken for a walk by Sally, Andy and Finn departed, and a game of PUSH was initiated by Joe that Anna was shanghai-ed into, whilst at the other end of the table something else occurred. I'm not sure what. It may have just been wild consumption of cheese. EDIT: looking at photos I see we played Tiny Towns. This was after Adam and I tried to play Ecos: First Continent, only to have Martin rule it out by repeatedly barking "no!" even though he wasn't playing.

I think I blanked it out because of my awful building-site finale - Adam won this, followed by Chris and Ian.

However around mid-evening seat-changing occurred with Just One back on the table in the kitchen while Ian, Adam and Chris suffered the indignity of finding out a crucial rule I'd missed in Word Domination: the game of allegedly taking over the world but actually just spelling things.

It's a neat little system of claiming cards by using the letters on them, the catch being you need to claim them in subsequent turns, and may be bumped off in the meantime by other players. I'd not realised the board actually grows during play, however, and we hurriedly implemented the rule when I found it in round 5. Despite Chris' vocabulary and my alleged (by Adam) always-winning at word games, it was Adam's shrewd strategic brain and claimed another win.

In Just One, meanwhile, four people clued gatherer, leaving poor Katy to try and guess Hunter from Joe's clue Orion. There was a substantial bout of cheating here, none of which sadly helped.

Sally couldn't be persuaded to stay up for another game, and so we were reduced to eight - Joe, Martin, Katy, Adam, Anna, Andrew, Ian and myself - for what would turn out to be the last game of an epic session - Pairs. Although I was barely drinking, my cheese and sugar intake had reached gargantuan proportions and I don't know what happened here at all, although I do recall Martin serially going bust on his first card flip and Katy doing well. I think she won - I went to the toilet, and when I returned, it was all over.

And so was the night!

Although our incongruous - for GNN - start of prolonged chat was rather sweetly mirrored at the end, as we sat around the table almost like normal people before we realised the time was 11pm and Ian and I were starting to yawn.

I'm pretty sure I've missed out some games as well as plenty of high points. A big bundle of fun and lovely to have so many of us under one roof at the same time! Thanks to everyone for coming and look forward to seeing some/all of you very soon... Tuesday?

Studio Line

Games at Joe’s studio has been the GNN way of welcoming in the New Year for at least twelve months now, and this year was no different (to last year). Joe hosted Katy (who arrived first) then myself (fresh from Monmouthshire) and Martin (came after he’d had supper).

When I got there, after limping through Bristol’s streets with a dodgy knee, I found Katy and Joe deep in Lost Cities. These cities must have been cold, since Katy was wearing a scarf and a blanket while Joe looked like he’d just come to the studio straight from his trawler. I found the completely bemusing, as I watched them place cards, pick them up and say that they’re completely screwed on the blues or some such fatalistic sentiments.

Katy insisted on splitting up the scoring to enhance the tension, only to find Joe rendering the whole process tense-less as he strolled to a win using exactly those blue cards that Katy had been throwing away.

Joe 101
Katy 77

Katy then informed me that she had soundly beat Joe at Innovation 6-1, with Joe pointing out that there’s no scoring in Innovation, you either win or you don’t.

At this point the two of them set off to buy pizza while I rest my knee. I take the opportunity to look at the games that Joe currently houses in his studio. Martin, arriving shortly afterwards, referred to them as “the dregs” but it included Lords of Vegas and Oregon. Joe later told us that more games would be transferred here as he is having work done on his kitchen. He’s not going to get any work done at all this year. While we waited for the pizza people to return, Martin and I played one round of Air, Land & Sea.

Next up, with Babylonia being nixed by Katy and Hit Z Road getting the thumbs down from me, we went for the co-op hit of the year Die crew. We started on Mission 23, somewhere near Callisto (one of Jupiter’s 69 moons, according to the thoroughly-researched narrative text) and had five tasks to complete between us. It took several attempts, but we finally nailed it (with me as commanding officer, by the way).

After this Mission 24 proved to be tricky too (six tasks, but in any order), and when we realised we had failed by the slimmest of margins, we put the game to one side and chose a new game: 5211.

This Japanese game sees every player playing two cards from their hand onto the table, revealing them simultaneously. Then, every player plays another one, then a final one in the same manner. The idea is that if the cards in front of you belong to the most common suit, then those will score. But if there are too many cards of the most common suit (seven or more) or if two suits are tied, then they don’t count for anything.

There are a couple of other rules thrown in, but that’s the jist of it. Katy began by asking if the cards had been shuffled, before playing nothing but green cards for all of round one. She continued to profess a lack of understanding of the game.

Some slightly over-designed cards from 5211

Joe 29
Martin 15
Andrew 15
Katy 12

Next was a couple of rousing games of Crokinole. Joe and I were in a team against Martin and Katy and despite a few good shots from Katy (which belied her insistence she was bad at the game) it was Joe and I that won two games, without Katy and Martin scoring a single point. Actually, it was mostly Joe who demonstrated an almost pro level of skill, perhaps putting to rest his reputation for being bad at flicking games.

Next, seeing as how it was too late for Lords of Vegas or Babylonia, we saw the evening out with some lighter fare. First was Mamma Mia, complete with faux Italian accents and Katy’s over-excitement at getting the Mamma Mia card and, therefore, being in charge of dealing out the deck of cards announcing each ingredient in turn.

Katy got off to an excellent start, completing three recipes in round one while I did none at all. I didn’t recover but Martin did and managed to match her at the end of the final round. Martin looked up the tie breaker while Katy dutifully put away the game. Alas, the tiebreaker was “the player with most ingredient cards left in their hand” and Katy couldn’t remember at all. They decided to rejoice in their shared victory.

Katy 5
Martin 5
Joe 3
Andrew 2

And now, with time ticking on (almost eleven o’clock) we played our final game as a quartet: The Mind Extreme. We battled through the first five rounds until we arrived at round six with three shurikens and two lives. Incredibly, round six began with a flurry of cards played to red and we had to stop ourselves and play a shuriken to try and find out where we were in the grand scheme of things. A few cards later we played a second shuriken and then, finally, we ended after a tense stand off between Katy and Martin who eventually played their final cards to differing piles.

We revealed the white pile to show just one mistake: a transposed seven and eight. So close. We needed a perfect run through red, though. It wasn’t looking hopeful.

Imagine our surprise when we succeeded! The crazed opening to the round had, in fact, been us perfectly in sync. We were amazed.

And perhaps too complacent as we quickly came unstuck on the “easier” round seven. A bit of an anti-climax but at least I am now a member of the “I’ve managed to get past round six in The Mind Extreme” gang and I can wear its badge (with its very small text) with pride.

Once Katy had gone, Martin, Joe and I finished off with Kribbeln: the game of complete luck unless you’re winning, in which case it’s all skill. We all had our moments of failure but while Martin and I had two blank rounds, Joe had four.

Martin 19
Andrew 17
Joe 13

And now we were finally done at quarter past eleven. My knee had rested enough, so I was confident about my return and I was pleased to get a little more gaming in before the end of the year. Looking forward to 2020! Cheers, all!