Disparate Dan

On Saturday night Sally and I were joined by pals Becky and Dan for some chat and light gaming.

We began with Insider, at Sally's request. Dan had already told me he struggled with too many rules, but that can't excuse him from his constant table-talk, especially when his eyes were closed. In fact he got so into heckling the master that he forgot to look at his own tile when he should have been the Insider, so we played a game with what amounted to three clueless commons.

Becky twice pulled off sneaky Insider wins. Sally and I - as I always am! - were successfully identified (with time running out on me as the Insider I guessed 'book', knowing that the word was 'novel' - but it was too little too late, and my protestations of innocence fooled no-one. This is why I never became an actor.

We moved onto Bandu and the reason for this post. After Dan's initial failure in the first game due to stacking everything on its side (not a great foundation when I was handing him tubular shapes) he then pulled off the most spectacular Bandu move I've seen - placing the egg-cup on top of the egg (it really doesn't fit, despite one's assumption it would) and managing to balance it there with the most unconvincing pedestal beneath:

We finished off with Las Vegas, which Dan also won, after my hopes of a resurgence were dashed in the second and third rounds (and the first, really).

The Ethnos Committee

Halloween - the witching hour. As four hardy gamers made their way to Joe's house, we encountered all manner of ghostly ghouls and spooks en route. In fact, I bumped into my own children outside the co-op. What manner of frightful events awaited us at Joe's house? Dear reader, all shall be revealed...

We began as a four - the host, Martin, Katy and myself (Sam). With Andrew still away, and others otherwise occupied, we remained a four until Ian joined us an hour later.

Star Cartel

Martin arrived with two new games garnered from his birthday - Star Cartel and Auf Teufel Komm Raus, the catchily-titled game of coal collection. We began with the former - an unusual game of galactic trade. Each player has a ship, and they gather enough of five resources to fill it and trade the goods. The goods they supply most of gain value, the goods they supply least of lose value. Any in-between goods (and you really want to have goods in-between) you can stash some of, and at the game's end cash them in for whatever value they have currently in the market.

Crystals, flora

It's essentially an abstract - despite the sciencey vibe to the illustrations, it might as well be pork pies, socks, or - as we often referred to them - colours. But everyone seemed to enjoy the catch here - unavoidably the resources you're devaluing or increasing the value of aren't the ones you keep (in a given delivery, anyway) so you need to think tactically - and ideally keep track of what everyone else is doing. Martin proved the best in the cartel's inaugural outing:

Martin 71
Sam 66
Joe 58
Katy 54

Ian walked in just as the scores were totted up, and we broke out Ethnos, the game that is "Ticket to Ride with Orcs" according to Martin.

Ethnos

The ins and outs of this game were explained in a previous post, but we all seemed to settle into a pattern on our turn that was Ticket to Ride with Who's on First. I complained about the light. Joe complained about his cards. Martin said "This is nice!". Katy said "This is stupid" - or some variation thereof - and Ian stared gloomily at his cards until prompted that it was his turn again. Despite the previously-celebrated playing speed of Ethnos, it wasn't moving fast enough for Katy, who wanted it over, and seemingly Ian too, who announced his last place as early as halfway through the first age.

"I'm losing" he said. When Katy told him not to write himself off just yet, he retorted "No. I'm losing" as though his mind was made up, and no namby-pamby positive optimism was going to change that.  And to be fair, he was right.

Martin, meanwhile, shot off into the lead, but in the second age I caught and overhauled him, thanks to my abundance of halflings, or as Martin described them, "useless cocks". In the third age it all fell apart, for most of us points-wise, and for Katy in existentialist terms. Fortunately the third dragon came out quickly, and Martin's large bands sewed up a second win for him:

Martin 123
Sam  108
Joe 74
Ian 65 (wins on predictions)

Katy then apologised for her rage, but don't worry Katy. I still cringe when I remember my almost anaphylactic reaction to Age of Empires III, which for some reason just did my nut in.  That was about seven only five years ago.

We ended on Martin's second game, Auf Teufel Komm Raus, which is a luck-pushing thing of grabbing hot coal out of a cauldron and hoping not to end up with the devil.

Come on hell, get out

At the start of each round everyone bets how much coal can be gathered by a single player without them going bust - the coals are numbered, so you're betting on the total number value, rather than the total number of coals. Then everyone tries to pull some coal out without flipping over a devil, as if you do that, you're bust. You want enough coal to make sure your own bet pays off, but not enough to pay out to anyone who out-bid you.

coal

It's really quite fun. My downfall in these games is to play too conservatively, and I found myself outbid in every round. But on this occasion everyone was pushing so much to claim the win at the end that my pathetic shrinking violet act was enough to grab second place. Joe took first - and with some aplomb, as he led from halfway through the game and never got the yips:

Joe 1600
Sam 1490
Katy 1460
Ian 1390
Martin 1070

And with the time now hovering around 11pm, we bade our farewells and disappeared into the frosty, forsaken night. Thanks all! That was a proper roller-coaster of a night!

Halfling Cut

Saturday night, and Ian and Adam joined Stan and I for a quick-ish game of Ethnos. This is a new game that takes set collection and mixes in some area control - wrapped up in a fantasy veneer. On your turn you either pick up a card, or play a set of cards as a Band of Allies, and doing so allows you to add a control marker on the board in one of six territories. The catch is, when you play a Band, you have to discard all your other cards to the display, allowing other players to grab them...

At the end of each of three ages, the areas are scored, and your bands are scored too: larger ones take longer to put together, but will get you a lot of points. Add in some 'leader' abilities - each band has a leader - and there's enough strategy to keep it interesting. Our first time with four players was a smidgen over an hour, and my early front-running fell away with a poor third age where I tried to build a band of Halflings but got sidetracked with the Wingfolk. Whilst Adam built his presence on the board, Stan  and Ian cleaned up on the Band scoring, and the boy nabbed the win:

Stanley 96
Ian 93
Adam 91
Sam 84

His reward was instant bedtime. I enjoyed Ethnos: it's a mix of tactics and luck but plays up to 6 - and very quickly. Often you're grabbing a card á la Ticket to Ride, and cursing the presence of Halflings, who don't add anything to the board but can potentially build you a big band, as they're at it like rabbits.

We next played Barenpark. We blasted through the basic game, with no objective tiles at all, and whilst Ian got himself in a pickle with lots of spaces for toilets, Adam and I raced to finish in the same round.

I'd done enough to grab a win:

Sam 87
Adam 78
Ian 72

There was loose talk of NMBR9, but because it was still pretty early I suggested Glen More, as I imagined Adam in particular might like it. I'm not sure if he did in the end - or indeed if any of us did. It didn't help that I was slightly hazy on a couple of rules, but I think the main drawback of Glen More is its capacity for Analysis Paralysis. The hub if it is the turn order which functions like the time track in Tinners Trail, and when you move along the track you're picking up tiles and building your own personal point-scoring landscape. There's always a temptation to jump ahead to a juicy tile, but you need to think about how all your tiles interact.

I enjoyed it last time I played it but this was a bit of a grind! We should have played NMBR9, sorry guys! I did at least have the grace to finish last, and would have been even further back without Adam's help. Ian graciously pinned his victory on 'being spawn' but I'm not sure that's entirely true.

Ian 83
Adam 63
Sam 55

Thanks chaps.

I hate you, Martin.

Tuesday, and eight gamers convened at the never-recently-witnessed home of Anja and Steve - as well as the hosts, there were Joe, Ian. Katy, Martin, Adam, and myself (Sam). I thought I'd emailed to say I was coming but apparently not. However Hannah was a late drop-out so numbers-wise my appearance was predestined, fortunately.

We began with a game of Rhino Hero: Super Battle, which is a combo of the fun building game that is Rhino Hero, and some utterly random dice-rolling game from the 1930's.  On your turn you add a floor, supporting it with a set of/combo of large or short walls, and possibly a monkey. Then you try and move your super-hero up the floors, because the highest super-hero (unless they knock the building over themselves) will be the winner.

However the movement is decided by a single dice roll, so the actual building is almost secondary. It was a lot of fun to build, but I think even Steve and Katy would admit their collective victory was down to fortune. Good fun, but ripe for a house variant. Steve did come up with one, but I'm not sure his stepladder will fit in the box.

Our building built (and packed away) we moved on to meatier fare. Martin led the Discworld group on one table, with Katy advertising it as the game that "Martin can lose". This was enough to tempt in Ian and Steve, whilst Adam, Anja and I joined Joe to play Downforce. This was my first visit to the racing game bunfight that's a cross betwixt trying to push your car over the line and trying to back the genuine winner.

I optimistically backed myself, but as the race continued it was a fight for first between Adam and Anja, with Joe nabbing third. I didn't see what everyone else backed, but my betting spread was a disaster, with only one of the three cars I backed placing - and in second, rather than first. Anja, despite spending big on a car that came sixth, grabbed the win:

Anja 21
Joe 18
Adam 14
Sam 11

A lot of fun. Discworld finished around the same time, and Katy's prescient words echoed around the room as Martin protested that he finished last "Because it's random". Outside of taking a picture though, I'm not sure what happened. Hopefully the comments will fill us in...

Steve 83
Ian 68
Katy 60
Martin 47

We'd started playing Kingdomino though; familiar to everyone but Anja. The early game was notable for Anja seeing what Adam was after and taking it, something she openly admitted to relishing "even more" when it's Adam she was preventing from scoring.  I set about building wheat and forest, and to my delight, no-one seemed too concerned about it. I felt pretty confident about the win, but it wasn't as cut and dried as I thought...

Sam 76
Joe 64
Anja 61
Adam 42

Ian and Joe swapped groups and when Martin suggested Flipships there was consternation when Katy said there would be no point playing it with Joe, because of his rubbish flicking would cost the Earth. How Joe must have laughed (possibly inwardly) when his first two flicks hit the mothership! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, for instance.

He was accused of practicing, and merely shrugged. But it was all to no avail, as the penultimate round saw them destroyed by a bunch of kamikaze nutters as Joe said "It wasn't even my fault":

Aliens: win
Joe, Katy, Martin and Steve: Lose

"Maybe they won't destroy the Earth" Steve said optimistically. "Maybe they'll make it a better place". His optimism almost made me feel like perhaps there is hope for humanity. But the evidence against is rather compelling.

Oh well. On our little table Adam, Anja, Ian and I were playing Blueprints, the tactical architect game of dice-building.

In each round you're building to a blueprint, and completing it gets you six points. But you can go off-piste, architecturally speaking, and risk building the tower. I recommended against it, at least in the first round, but come the second round Ian had decided to go for it: building the tower got him the best building and bonuses for both the tower (it was a tower) and the fact it was made with lots of stone. In the final reckoning, it wasn't enough, but if only all architecture was as dramatic as this! (Maybe it is. I don't know)

Adam 28
Ian 27
Sam 24
Anja 19

We ended with some rousing Fuji Flushes, as with Luther away with grandparents there was no chance of waking him with our cries of delight and talk of dicks. Both games were notable for Martin's consistently picking up appallingly bad cards and Katy and I obsessing over the (lack of) clockwise dealing. Beyond that I don't remember much about them now. Luckily, I wrote down the scores:

Fuji #1
Joe wins
Anja 1 card
Sam/Steve/Adam/Katy 2 cards
Ian 3 cards
Martin 5 cards

Fuji #2
Ian wins
Sam/Katy/Joe/Steve 1 card
Anja/Adam/Martin 2 cards

And that was it! I'm not sure about the context of the post title, except I heard Katy yell it during Discworld.

Prisoners of Preponderance

With Andrew set for distant climes and Joe unavailable, it was a mere quintet making up GNN last night - Ian, Katy, Andy, the host Martin and myself (Sam). Five is proving to be a difficult number in terms of gaming choices though. We went through Martin's collection making various suggestions that only played four, before coming to a final decision of Tammany Hall or San Quentin Kings. Perhaps it was Martin's relish in describing how brutal Tammany Hall was that made us plump for the latter - but as it turned out, San Quentin Kings is pretty brutal too. As one should expect from a game set in a prison.

Martin set about explaining the rules and I realized I was feeling sick. Was it the theme? Was it the fact I'd just eaten about half a kilo of popcorn? Was it the absence of Andrew and Joe? Or was it Martin's tablecloth, which he refused to remove, despite the combination of optically bedazzling pattern and bumps.

 dear lord

Combined with the fact I'd forgotten my glasses, I had to keep closing my eyes to focus on the words.

Fortunately the nausea passed, and I was soon ship-shape and ready to start being really abhorrent. In San Quentin Kings everyone is running a gang and trying to finish the game with the best reputation. Rep in this case is brought about by frankly horrible things - violence, bribery and drugs; the latter coming in three forms of brown horse, white horse and green baboon. The game plays over three years and in each year all the areas of the prison get activated: allowing you to recruit more members, get drugs or contraband, work out at the gym (improving your gang's fighting performance) and shank each other.

San Quentin, surrounded by acres of fencing

But how much you can achieve comes down to bidding - whenever an area gets activated there's a blind bid where gang members are simultaneously revealed. You can bid a lot, a little, or none at all. You can also bid different types of gang members. But that's just the start - now there are three rounds of fighting where you can add cards to your bid/gang in order to boost their strength. You hope for a matching card for your gang members because non-matching ones have no effect. But you can also get caught by a guard and sent to solitary, killed, or - just as bad - get out on parole. A gang member not actually in prison is of zero use. So having the biggest bid at the outset is no guarantee of success.

Mix in the bribes and it's a game that could have been called Take That, if the nomenclature didn't come with such melodic baggage. You can use them for all manner of chicanery, but it's more than likely your target will simply hit you right back, giving them the shall I-shan't I? feel of the highest bidding tile in Ra.

bribes

Each time you win a fight you gain a fight point, and having most fight points at the end of the game gives your rep a big boost. After the final (third) year, there's a riot in the yard - one final fight for no other reason than to punch each other in the face. Nothing to gain but gloating and sore knuckles.

I started reasonably well, building a hand of contraband that allowed me to make bribes. But often one bribe is simply parried with another, and I found them almost a source of frustration. After that though I played too conservatively, and ended up with a gang too small to have any real outcome on the game.

big guys; medium guys

Ian also started well but by the time the third year arrived, he still hadn't won a single fight and was well behind on the fight track. "That's because Ian's a pacifist!" Katy said defensively when Martin pointed it out. "No I'm not!" Ian retorted.  He announced that he was in a bad position: "A bad, bad, bad, bad position" to be exact, and said he'd lost. He was right.

Rear shows the fight track, with Ian (yellow) lagging

Despite Martin being in last on the reputation track everyone suspected he was going to win and kept stealing his drugs. He and Katy kept stealing each other's horses, much to Martin's chagrin. "I've got baboons coming out of my arse" he grumbled, like a resentful mule.

My hunch on the scores was Martin - Katy - Andy - Sam - Ian, but as it turned out Andy's largely narcotic-free approach saw him surge up the track in final scoring to clinch the win, with Katy third.

Andy 27
Martin 24
Katy 18
Sam 17
Ian 11

To borrow an appropriately judicial term, the jury seemed to be out on San Quentin Kings. Martin and Katy liked it. Andy didn't, as evidenced by his hurling his gang members down the table with the style of a leader who uses fear, not respect. Ian and I seemed to be havering; I think like me he felt it was a bit too chaotic for the two and a half hour play time. I'd try it again though.

After the riot everyone was ready for something a bit gentler, so we cracked out Mamma Mia.

pineapple and olive. the great lost pizza-topping combo

It was as tense as Mamma Mia can be, as after two rounds anyone - conceivably anyone, though Martin was lagging behind - could have won. I had a slender lead of one recipe, but Ian, Andy and Katy all had just one less than me. They all managed to draw level, whereas Martin and I floundered, leaving the scores at a near-equilibrium:

Everyone apart from Martin - 4 recipes
Martin - 3 recipes

There was just time for Martin to channel his disappointment into another scathing assessment of Uwe Rosenberg's big games (Andy and I tried to defend them, but we were no match for Martin's passion) before another classic GNN Tuesday drew to a close. Thanks all!

The Unified Theory of Nothing

I sat down to write up our second visit to Alchemists, and found myself joined by two miniature co-authors. So here's a three-person report on our Sunday games session:

Sam: On Sunday Andrew joined Stanley and I for a bash at Alchemists. We (me and Stan) had already played a 6-round game of A Feast for Odin by the time he got here, so we were really in the zone.

You have to be in the zone to play Alchemists. Although there's a very strict logic at play here, working everything out isn't easy.  For someone like me, who goes blank at long division, trying to break down the very components of life itself is a challenge.

Stan: I won A Feast for Odin, by the way.

Sam: Yes. Anyway...

Stan: By quite a few points.

earlier

Sam: Yes. So with Alchemists - as I tried to write in the previous post - you're making and selling potions for gold to buy artefacts to get points, but that's kind of the day to day business. What you're really trying to do is work out what the (al)chemical components are to your ingredients. Do that, and you can publish theories about your work and improve your rep.

Stan: A Feast for Odin is much better. 

Sam: Alchemists is fascinating. I don't know if I think it's the 52nd best game in the world, or even the 52nd best game I've played, but it is definitely very different.

Stan: Yeah, but A Feast for Odin has a good tang to it and it's like a thousand times harder to do, so I'm much better at playing games than you are!

Sam: What Stan is trying to say is that I trounced them both at Alchemists. And what I think is fair to add is that we all went seriously wrong in our deductions. Both Stan and I spotted Andrew's first theory was incorrect, and we raced to debunk him. But Stan also tried to debunk my theories three times and failed - even though my theories were actually, it turned out, utterly wrong. I meanwhile managed to eliminate every single alchemical as a possible match for not one, but two ingredients. As an alchemist I was essentially moronic. I had no idea how to utilise the knowledge of neutral matches, and I still don't.

Joe: I wasn't even there, but I just like saying stuff. 

Sam: The best part of Alchemists is the final reveal, where you uncover the actual alchemical for each ingredient, and reveal everyone's theory. Of the eight, we had two right - an exceedingly poor return for supposed experts!  I pictured us all shuffling out of the conference with our heads bowed, trying to spin it that we had made great progress...

Joe: I hate alchemists!

Sam: Thank you, Joe.

Stan: All you have to understand that A Feast for Odin is a very technical and strategic game and should be given more importance to than a rubbish game like Alchemists.

Sam: Despite the late drama where I lost about 12 points, I still hung on to the lead. I should add in fairness to Stan that he forgot to exhibit potions in the final round. And in fairness to Andrew that he wasn't aware of the terribly punitive effects of having your theories debunked, as his were.  I had neglected to explain it, as in mine and Stanley's two-player we'd never dared cause that kind of consternation in the alchemic community.

Stan: You could also add that I won A Feast For Odin?

Sam: I think they got it.

Turning cardboard into gold

Alchemy! The art of turning base metal into gold... or in this case, turning toad and leaf into a potion of healing. I picked up a half-price copy of Alchemists this week, courtesy of trading in Steam Park - turning steam-punk amusements into life or death elixir.

It's a very unusual game, in part because it uses an app. Each of the game's six ingredients have a corresponding 'alchemical' comprised of three parts: red, blue and green circles. A circle may be large or small, and each contains a symbol of either positive or negative. During the game, you mix these ingredients together to make potions (or soup) and at the start the app randomly (and secretly) assigns each ingredient its alchemical.

The game itself at first seems like a worker placement thing: you use actions to gather ingredients, turn them into gold, combine them to sell potions to adventurers, use gold to buy artefacts, and test potions - on either a willing (sometimes more willing than others) student, or yourself.  Each potion has a symbol, and you keep track of how you made things behind your individual screen.

And then you realise it's a deduction game. As it goes on, you use the information you're gathering about how the various ingredients interact to figure out what each ones alchemical is. If, for instance, scorpions and frogs combine to make a potion of speed, this is defined by a blue plus. You don't know yet what eithers' alchemical is, but you do know that scorpions and frogs alchemical won't have a blue minus on them, so these can be eliminated on your secret pad.

And as the game continues further, and you gather more knowledge on how the ingredients interact, you can announce the theories to the world you've developed in you secret lab/pad, by placing the alchemical and ingredient together with a seal that represents your theory. You gain reputation by doing so - but theories can be debunked (even by yourself) later, so there's room for a little shenanigan-ing here.

There's more to it than that, but basically the app comes into it for combining ingredients to make potions, selling them and testing them, and checking everyone's theories at the end of the game. In the final round there's even an opportunity to show off your potion-making to the wider world and gain - or lose - reputation. Inevitably, you ultimately live or die by how good an alchemist you are - if your theories are lousy, you lose rep. And - though the game doesn't mention it in the rules - if you make a mistake on your secret pad, you also lose rep: both in the game (can't really have a theory about scorpions if you've managed to cross every alchemical off) and in real life, as you realise in your foolishness you've eliminated every single alchemical for mangrove root.

Stanley joined me halfway through a playthrough and afterwards announced "It's a brain-burner". And it is. Not only the deduction, which has the get-there-first tension reminiscent of Mystery of the Abbey, but how the actions play out. Turn order is really important, as there's a Fresco-style benefit to getting up early and taking actions first. There's also a fight (in the two-player game) to sell potions to adventurers, with some blind-bidding thrown in to decide the winning vendor. It's one I definitely want to play again (maybe with three), but I think we'd need three hours for a first play, so it might not be one for a Tuesday...