Future Gamers II

The Old London Chapter of GNN - Andrew, Paul J, Chris and myself - gathered online last night for a long-mooted gaming session. I'd not seen Paul in over a year so it was nice to catch up, and see his penchant for impulse purchases was still intact with a spaceship-type lighting system. This effect added to the sense that our cottage-in-the-country weekends were from a different time, and we were now in the Future.

Chris was in Chippenham, and had dyed his hair - as an experiment, he insisted. Whether this was true or not, or how much he was lying to himself, he did look remarkably younger and we discussed the merits of spraying my bald patch, a la Bob Mortimer. Paul mentioned he'd cut his own hair so didn't know what the back looked like.

Andrew was conspicuously on the fence. He began mysteriously uncamera-ed later added a camera, but remained invisible to me throughout the evening, as Zoom refused to show me how much he'd changed. Is he pumping iron every morning and downing protein shakes? Enquiring minds, etc.

After comparing lockdown notes we kicked things off with 7 Wonders. I was surprised to see I hadn't played it in well over a year, but for Paul it was possibly longer. Some things never change though - sandwiched between Paul and Chris, both Andrew and I found ourselves militarily bullied, as he discovered lots of peaceful science and I concentrated on gentle culture. The entire undertaking took about 15 minutes! With a computer around to not-forget which way to pass your cards, 7 Wonders was exceedingly brief. And Paul's absenteeism did him no harm, it turned out:

Paul 60
Chris 56
Sam 47
Andrew 46

We moved on to another speedy undertaking in Love Letter. Again Paul's rustiness did him no harm here either, as he sailed to a 3-1-1-0 lead, at one point ousting Chris with a Priest in the Hole.

But as Andrew and I serially imploded, Chris came back from the dead to claim an improbable victory!

Chris 4
Paul 3
Andrew 1
Sam 1

We stuck with the sillier end of the gaming spectrum with Perudo. Having played this on Tuesday I was already familiar with the foibles of boardgamearena's particular version of the rules, but it didn't help me at all. Dudos kept blowing up in my face as, once again, Paul began to look the dominant stag amongst a bunch of stick-legged deer-children*. The evening does begin to get hazy here though, with various people going off for a wee or simply vanishing for a moment or two. I also realised I'd downed three glasses of wine already at it was barely 9pm. At this point, driven mad by smallish children, Sally came in to confiscate aforementioned wine but before leaving poured me a very large fourth. So my recall - never the best anyway - starts to go on the fritz. I thought I took photos, but I didn't. I do remember Stanley coming in and confusing me by not speaking - it turns out he'd taken a vow of silence that continues this morning - and I also remember, I think, though, that Chris was first out, then Andrew, then it was my two dice versus Paul's five. Twice I tried to bluff him and twice he read me like a book: it was a very convincing win for the man from Croydon:

Paul
Sam
Andrew
Chris

Mine and Andrew's last game of the evening was Carcassonne. This hasn't been seen for years in our house, but the rules are burned into our memories.  Paul was the big points-scorer early on, but as he said himself, he was doing no farming. Andrew and I got into a passive-aggressive farmer battle where I managed to actually connect his fourth Farmer to the main 'board' with a absent-minded placement. D'oh! Chris trod a path between these extremes, getting a couple of Farmers down too but also focusing his efforts on some city expansion. As is often the case with this game, the farming paid off:

Sam 69
Andrew 64
Paul 62
Chris 53

I was fading fast and Andrew had to go to work, so we bowed out, leaving Chris and Paul to crack out a finale in the classic two-player, Jaipur.

1 Chris
2 Paul

They'll have to tell that dramatic tale themselves, as I was probably asleep before it finished. A nice confection of gaming, thanks chaps....

*fawns

Future Gamers

Another Isolation Tuesday was never going to stop GNN, although we did have unfortunate absentees with Andrew and Adam T late drop-outs. But there was still six of us - Katy, Ian, Martin, and myself kicked things off with a game of For Sale, which Adam H and Joe joined as spectators towards the finale.

For Sale was a strange beast. Several times people didn't bother bidding at all, which led to some inevitable over-bidding when everyone realised they still had loads of cash and the 29 and 30 came out. We entered the game's second stage with a sense of mystery over who was doing well that was, for me anyway, more pronounced than when you're in the room together. As it turned out though Ian and I were best real estate agents on this particular occasion. I won on a tie-breaker that I now forget.

Sam
Ian
Martin
Katy

With Joe and Adam now present, we moved swiftly on to Codenames. This was a real thriller - or as much of a thriller as Codenames can ever be. Joe was spymaster to his agents Adam and Ian, whereas I gave clues to Martin and Katy. Both teams made solid starts, successfully getting two clues each. Then things got a bit wonky, with Joe and I getting a little ambitious with our clueing as we tried to build up a lead. I linked port and pole with Amundsen, but Martin and Katy (after getting pole) not unreasonably picked hood and Canada. Joe's team had me abandon my clue of Queen for London and crown when they picked our London for something. I forget what.

It looked like our goose was cooked when we had four words left to get for the other team's two, but when Joe clued hops for field and Czech, he dramatically broke Codenames etiquette by making it clear that they shouldn't choose plane when Adam started talking about 'city hops'. Consumed by guilt, Joe then insisted they should choose plane, and - as plane was a bystander - we were handed an extremely tenuous lifeline. I clued prince for crown, and then Katy and Martin figured out back and contract for shingles, and wrapped things up by getting the missing Amundsen word - port! It was a back-from-the-dead victory.

Whew. After that we needed something a bit sillier and plumped for Incan Gold, replete with zombie ladies. This turned out to be even more dramatic, as Katy died twice but then came back from the dead by not dying after everyone else had bailed, picking up a huge haul of gems. But it wasn't enough to catch Martin, who after gathering a big haul early on, kept leaving at the optimum moment to build on his lead:

Adam ('OldHarry') was about to lurch from last to first though, with our next undertaking of Perudo. This was the game that brought home to Stan - lurking at my end - exactly how foul-mouthed everyone at GNN is. Particularly Katy and Martin. It is the type of game where saying "You bunch of cocks" barely gets noticed, to be fair. I was first out, followed swiftly by Joe - at one point dice leader with Martin - and then Katy and Martin went as well, leaving Ian to mull over Adam's bid of one five. "Dudo him!" I cried. "He hasn't got a single five!" Ian dudo-ed. Adam had a five and an ace.

The final game of the night - for me - was Wavelength. After our strong early showings with this game, we've been increasingly erratic, and last night was no different. Maybe we didn't help ourselves by being slightly peckish at this point - everyone wandered off to get a snack, apart from Joe, who said 10.30pm was too early for cereal. There was much debate, particularly between Martin and Joe, or Martin and Adam, and much chagrin from Adam when he felt we should have done better with 'HS2' on the local/global spectrum. He reminded us he'd won perudo. Martin invoked Michael Gove again, and again it didn't work. We kept missing the target entirely - in fairness, often not by much - and scored some measly 6 points or something. I didn't write it down. At this point I was flagging, in fact, and had to retire to bed. Everyone else was staying up for one more game, but I don't know what it was. Please say in the comments!

I hear you knocking

Another week of social distancing means another week of logging into Discord and taking advantage of the internet's ability to entertain.

There were nine of us. Ian, Katy, Martin, Joe (trying to download Discord to his Mac because his phone was dying), Steve, Anja, Sam, Adam H, and me. With such high numbers, we decided to play 6nimmt. It was available on Board Game Arena, but one of us needed to be a premium member in order to set up a game and invite the rest of us to join.

Ian was impressed enough by the site to put his hand into his pocket and he invited us all to join him as we registered one by one. Whenever someone accepted the invitation, it was accompanied by a knocking noise that Joe found unsettlingly creepy and it did indeed sound like something you’d hear coming from the next room while exploring an abandoned log cabin.

The set up was all going pretty smoothly until Anja joined. Suddenly the site threw up a warning that two players had the same IP address. This is not allowed, due to the risks of cheating. Unless you're a subscriber, in which case it's fine. Anja dutifully paid the membership fee and suddenly the site went from sneering accusations to complimenting her moral integrity. Money talks.

The game played out as you’d expect. Death spirals, hopeless situations (such as the only available space being the one after the highest card 104) and impossibly lucky escapes. Katy bemoaned her bad luck but that was mostly because she couldn’t work out if she’d actually picked up cards or not. Turns out she did okay.

Katy 47 (points left out of 66)
Steve 45
Ian 35
Martin 30
Sam 18
Anja 8
Adam 8
Andrew 2
Joe -1

Then we split into groups, after Steve vetoed the idea of him and Anja playing as a team in Incan Gold. Katy, Martin, Joe and I chose Tichu, at Katy’s suggestion while the others played… Incan Gold. Of course.

Since they stayed on Discord and we decamped to Google Hangouts, I have no idea what happened on the other “table” but here are the scores:

Sam 31
Adam 22 (least thinky, according to the website)
Ian 19
Anja 15 (most thinky)
Steve 13

They also played Codenames, but I know nothing about that.

As for Tichu, Katy needed a rules refresher, so it was very good that Martin made sure to turn the timer off. Joe and I took full advantage of Katy’s cautiousness and ran into a 250-50 lead after round two. Then Katy called Tichu and handed the Dragon card to Martin, causing him to erupt with bafflement (if such a thing is possible). But after a tricky start, they came back into it and actually got within one card of winning (Martin had completed his Tichu and Katy just had one card to put down for a 1-2 finish) but Joe and I just got across the line.

J & A 490
M & K 410

Then Sam, Joe and Steve all left so the remaining gamers all gathered on Google Hangouts and played Just One.

We didn’t do nearly as well as last time, and it’s probably best if we skip over any details, but I will mention Katy correctly guessing “Revolution” and crediting Anja’s “Televised” as being the key clue (as opposed to my “Beatles” and Adam’s “Vodka”)

Score: 4 (try again and again…)

And with that we were done. Time to shut down and go straight to bed.

Duplicating pansies

Covid 19 continues to dog the land and so z for the third time, we met up virtually again for our weekly fix. Ian, Katy, Sam, Martin, Joe and myself used the full force of technology to simulate leaving the house.

We began with Codenames using a basic but functional website and it worked pretty well. The teams were Blue (Martin, Sam and me) against Red (Joe, Katy and Ian).

I was called away for the first round to try and fix my girlfriend's monitor and by the time I got back, I discovered Katy and Ian pondering Joe’s clue of “masturbation, two” (the two answers were “hand” and “pants”).

Katy got the yips over clicking on squares to advance the game after she accidentally revealed an opposing team’s clue and all of us had reason to pause over who was clicking what and was it okay to go on. This caused Joe to go into a lengthy reverie about how similar it must be for those manning the button for nuclear missiles. "Shall I do it?" "Now? Is that okay?"

In the last round when I was spymaster, I managed to overlook that fact that “fly” is an insect whereas my intended target “spider” wasn’t. Happily, I managed to recover with clues like “Halo” for “Angel” and “Crown.”

Blue 2
Red 1

After this Sam left for an early night and the remaining five of us eschewed specialised websites and instead played Just One on Google Hangouts. We all got our own stationary and Martin noted that his pen didn’t work properly “which is par for the course in this game.” I duplicated often, which at least gave us two bonus points for correctly guessing the eliminated words. Joe managed to guess (somehow) that, for the clue “flower”, Katy and I both wrote “pansy”. It was suprising enough when I saw Katy had read my mind, but pretty astonishing when Joe did it too.

We did very well. It would’ve been perfect but Katy wasn’t able to match Martin’s clue “greased” with the target word “lightning”. When it was explained that it was a song in the musical Grease, she said she’d always thought it was “Grease Lightning”. How we laughed.

Score: GNN bonus point method: 14. Off the scorechart! Official method: 12. “Incredible!”

Then Katy wanted one more game to play before she went off to watch her gig in twenty minutes. After that, she said, the four of us could go and play Tichu. The silence that followed told her that, actually, she may as well go now. Taking the hint, she departed to spend some quality time with her favourite band.

The remaining four of us upped sticks and set off for a website where we can play Tichu. Early on we ran into an issue: every move was restricted by a timer. Martin didn’t notice and immediately got a “slow play 1/3” warning. This rather strict aspect meant that going to the toilet had to be carefully timed. Next we found another slight issue: Auto-fold meant that the site automatically made a player pass if they didn’t have a hand strong enough to compete.This meant that bluffing was almost impossible. So we turned it off until Joe needed to go to the toilet and he turned it back on again.

But we put these down as minor teething troubles. That was until Ian picked up his third Slow Play warning and the game suddenly ended. And that was that. Nothing we could do - we had just angered the Tichu Gods and there was no button to click to make it all right.

I’m pretty sure that Joe and Martin were winning when the game ended. We then acquainted ourselves with how judgmental the site can be by looking over the list of “cheaters” and “leavers” that are available to peruse on the site. How odd.

But the best thing for me was that I have Tichu on my phone and I changed the names of the AI opponents to Martin, Ian and Joe and here I was in exactly the same situation. They were ever sitting in the same place! Living the dream, baby!

And that was the end of the evening. We turned off our cams and went to bed. Thanks all. Let’s try it all again soon.

Ikea wardrobes and gravestones

When Gary Numan's Tubeway Army sang "Are Friends Electric?" back in 1979 he could well have been singing about the new look GNN that entered its second week of social distancing this Tuesday.

Six of us met up on the Discord server, Ian, Martin, Joe, Katy, Sam and - a few minutes late - me.

When I arrived/logged on they were playing Bring Your Own Book, a game that translates quite easily to remote play. This time there was a little variant where players wouldn't announce their books so they could be guessed by the others at the end of the game.

I came in halfway through but with no attempt at keeping score, this wasn’t a problem. I grabbed my copy of “The women who built Bristol” hoping it would have enough variety for a range of amusing retorts. It didn’t. We only played a few rounds, one of which was “Something you’d be surprised to find in a coat pocket” which Sam won with “Christmas.”

Then we encountered technical difficulties as Martin’s audio kept cutting in and out. His long, weary sigh worthy of a Jane Austen novel came through loud and clear though. We decamped from Discord and set up on Google Hangouts to finish of Bring Your Own Book.

Then we played Wavelength with Katy in charge of the dial and cards. Our first category was “Smelly in a good/bad way” to which Katy clued “Hair.” A baffling choice that kind of lead us towards a middling result and we were lucky enough to hit 3 points!

We then went through a see-saw game, alternating between three points and not scoring at all before collapsing with two fails. Joe’s clue for “Wet/dry” was “banana” and we were hopelessly wrong, putting it far wetter than Joe had. “You don’t get banana juice for a reason,” Joe grumbled afterwards. Another failure was Sam’s clue of “umbrella” for “Fragile/Durable.” Our deliberations involved a lengthy detour concerning an umbrella made of sausages. It didn’t help us get the right answer. By means of explanation, Sam mentioned that at the durable end of his scale were “Ikea wardrobes and gravestones” which was notable enough for me to write it down.

Score: nine points.

Finally we all set up on the slow and juddering website Yucata for another game of Las Vegas. Joe pointed out that his German copy of the game was called Vegas and he wondered if it might be worth something. I mused that, being German, it should’ve been called Das Vegas. Joe may have a copy of his won, but he still needed to be reminded of the rules after he tried to put his four dice in the two casino.

There was a little smutty innuendo regarding sticking things in the golden nugget and me saying “Don’t hold onto your neutrals too long” and Joe replying “they can blow up in your face.”

Joe was in fine form with his wit, rules confusion and, additionally, an inability at scoring at all in the first two rounds. How we laughed (“we” meaning us, not Joe). In round three he finally scored by putting six dice into one casino. He then won round four which, surprisingly, was enough to get him out of last place. I won what was a close game.

Andrew $300,000
Martin $280,000
Ian $250,000
Joe $230,000
Katy $220,000

And with that, we set off home except that we were all home. Thanks all for the entertainment. See you all next week.

End of the evening, all cameras turned off

Viva Las Vegas, Viva GNN

With Covid 19 making its unwelcome way around the world, it made no sense to ignore all medical advice and meet up, especially with our longstanding snack-sharing habits and tendency to high-five or spit insults at each other. Times are worrying, but when worrying times are upon us it does no good to simply wring our hands - and to that end, Ian set up a Discord channel and Adam, Andrew, Martin and I all joined him on the hallowed Tuesday evening... to play a game.

Initially the web wasn't that welcoming - with thousands if not millions around the world having the same idea, two gaming websites were struggling with traffic. Then Martin suggested yucata.de and after a bit of discussion over how much he would hate Castles of Burgundy - one day we'll know - we settled on the mini-classic that is Las Vegas.

vegas

Yucata's gaming interface was pretty straightforward - even a dunce like me could, eventually, work out how to use it. It was intriguing though to hear the others all trying out various buttons whilst we were online. I was relieved I knew how to take my turn, particularly after we discovered that we were all seeing different colours. To me, I was red, but to everyone else I was blue or green or something.

Ian to me

In the game itself Ian and Adam got off to a flier whilst Andrew and I tailed behind. Martin got stiffed in the first round and looked to be out of it after the second he was so far behind. He then had a very strong third to come back into contention, but at this point we were all trying to stop Adam - words that over the last nine and a bit years have so often come with the addendum: in vain.

Round four wrapped the game up as Adam yet again scored big and wrapped up a convincing win:

Adam $280,000

Ian  $260,000

Andrew/Sam $250,000

qwertyMartin $180,000

Martin and I had to then exit, I'm not sure if the others went on to play something else...? I hope so. Although it's not the same as being in the room together, there was something really lovely about hearing everyone still being: Hannah's peals of laughter in the background, Ian's music, Andrew's habit of speaking in a very quiet voice away from the mic, while Stan and Joe came in and out and examined the screen in fascination. All rather lovely.... again next week?

Stay safe all 

x

Choc Rocking Beats

Two weeks ago, late withdrawals lead to us going from ten attendees down to five. This week, we went from seven down to five. Does this make us more popular or less?

The five of us were Martin, Katy, Sam, Joe and me with Joe expected a little late so we began as a four. First we banged out a quick Gold Fever. Its King-of-the-hill type strategy of attacking the leader meant that I ended the game with very few stones in my sack at all since I was never a threat. Sam won it, though, declaring “I’m going for it!” before pulling another gold nugget from his bag.

Sam 4
Martin 3
Katy 3
Andrew 2

Still no Joe, so we played L.A.M.A. Katy went clear in round two but, pivotally, Sam went clear in round four when the rest of us were laden with cards and he was able to put back a ten-point token.

Sam 20
Katy 23
Martin 38
Andrew 50

But still no Joe. Twice now the method of starting a game, expecting it to be interrupted by a knock on the door had failed. We debated what to play and Katy suggested Beowulf again, only to see it rejected again. Instead we went for a new game, King Chocolate. While we set up Joe finally arrived, a little frazzled after his ordeal in trying to find a parking space. He sat down at his allocated space and was introduced to the world of making chocolate.

In this game players place tiles in the shape of two conjoined hexagons that become areas representing different stages of chocolate productions from bean to chocolate via things like "nibs" and "liquor." It was pretty bemusing. With six stages of production but only four workers per player, the game required a certain amount of cooperation. We seemed unwilling to go down that path and did so only begrudgingly, especially if it benefited Martin and his vast liquor fields.

Katy initially gave herself a winning score but among widespread surprise, not least from herself, at her victory, she remembered a potential mistake when changing some currency and then she nobly took five points off her score, giving Sam his third win of the evening.

Sam 49
Katy 48
Joe 47
Martin 36
Andrew 27


Next up, we were in the mood for something silly and knockabout. Stinker was brought back to the table after too long away. I didn’t even remember the rules and I started slowly, scoring nothing for the first five cards. Katy’s new Nike slogan, “Love de shoe” was an early winner, as was her “Go arses” which was her way of telling people to leave. I got back into the groove, though, with my reason for being sent to the headmaster’s office: Tintin cosplay. This was hard for Martin to take since he’d made an answer using all of his tiles. Martin did okay, though, with quality answers like: tips to give a marathon runner - Move more haughtily.

Martin 40
Katy 40
Andrew 30
Sam 30
Joe 26

Next up we played co-operative Wavelength. We did better than before, and the card-winning answers were Dog/Cat name = Rover (from Joe, who admitted it was too easy), Un/hygenic + washing your hands for thirty seconds (Martin’s tweaking of health advice put us on the right track) and Gossip/News = Katie Price’s maternity dress (from me, and I suspect this was blind luck, although they did discuss it a lot).

Harmless or harmful: according to Katy, a pencil is pretty lethal.

Us: 18 points

Then, as we put it away, we marvelled at the best box fart in town.

Katy went back at this stage so the remaining four played Melee: a short war game with some very nice 16-bit graphics. Each player got a castle and then a limited number of moves and money to wage war on your neighbours. War is curious: the attacker reveals how much money they have in total and then they put some (or all) of that in a closed fist. The defender has to guess how much is in there. Get it right and they successfully defend. Get it wrong and they are vanquished.

It was, you know, fun. Joe and I attacked each other. Martin attacked Sam who successfully defended, but then lost to Martin’s knight. Not to be downhearted, he rallied and took the centre area which gave him another win.

Sam 3 provinces
Joe 2
Andrew 2
Martin 1

It was okay. Hard to tell, really, it was over so soon. But we were quite pooped and we bade our farewells for another week. Thanks for hosting Sam, see you all next week which will apparently involve cake.