Wednesday 30 August 2017

I'm totally incensed

This Tuesday's GNN-ness started a few minutes earlier than expected when I met former regular Steve as I walked to Sam's. He couldn't make it tonight, but he told me of a recent visit to a games shop in Germany. Has his flame been rekindled? We can only hope.

I arrived at Sam's to find the host and Joe already halfway through a game of Kribbeln and a margarita each. The roll & write game didn't last long with just two players, but despite its short duration it was surprisingly tense.

Joe 12
Sam 12

By the time they were done, Ian and Martin had joined us. We weren't expecting Katy and Adam for another fifteen minutes so we squeezed in a quick game of No Thanks! The game which, as Ian noted, you can't turn down because it sounds like you're agreeing.

Ian went for the low cards, with the rest of us going for higher cards. In my case, much higher. Martin seemed resigned to the fact that his favoured cards would be picked by other players, with a weary question (rhetorical, I hope) of "Who wants to kick me in the balls?" whenever he turned over certain cards. Turns out, the player furthest from wanting to kick his balls was the clear winner.


Ian 6
Sam 23
Andrew 26
Martin 29
Joe 29

Now we were seven, so we split into to. Three (Katy, Ian and Martin) took on the undead in Hit Z Road. The remainder (Sam, Adam, Joe and me) chose Tribes.


Tribes has been a recent hit of the summer with Sam playing several games and had enjoyed it. This time, though, for whatever reason, the wheels fell of the game's engine.

Sam's early bad luck with exploring didn't help his cause. He found a lot of incense, which is fine for ceremonial burials, but not much else. At least it gave me the blog title.

But it was probably the twin threat of two event tiles that exhausted tiles (ie, took away resources) that really caused problems. No matter how much we avoided them, eventually they got played, with Adam suddenly finding all his abundant fields were barren. On the other hand, he had almost all the shells (the game's currency, used to avoid choosing a tile) while the rest of us had only a few, if any.

This meant there were a few goes were we couldn't afford to choose our action and Adam could only explore, trying to find new resources to use. The game entered a sort of holding pattern, while we slowly tried to get our plans in place.

I was first to leap into action and, since I was already in the lead, my victory was pretty comprehensive.

Andrew 28
Sam 18
Joe 11
Adam 11

Tribes didn't get a lot of love, and Sam admitted that if that had been his first game, he wouldn't have been impressed either. He seemed baffled by how it had played out, as if he didn’t recognise the game at all. Perhaps the most entertaining parts were the text messages from Joe’s daughter on a camping trip wanting to know how to make a kettle boil faster. “Don’t look at it,” suggested Adam.

Hit Z Road, on the other hand, was all excitement accompanied by a steady flow of expletives, mostly from Martin. They had a hard time of it, and had only two survivors left by the time the tougher cards came out.

They didn't last much longer. No one reached the West coast, but Martin was last man standing.

Martin, one survivor still alive
Ian, died later
Katy, died earlier

Since we ended at the same time, groups were rearranged. And I think it was around now when Joe insisted he could probably kick himself in the balls. He even stood up, lifting his left foot up, yoga-like in the required direction. Just as a proof of concept: I don't think actual contact was made. I guess those margaritas were pretty potent.

Now Adam, Katy and Ian played Biblios while Martin & me and Joe & Sam teamed up for Montage.

Montage was tough and I kept getting the colours confused, and I had the embarrassment of giving a clue and then having to retract it. Sam & Joe were perhaps feeling the effect of the early margaritas, since the game was over quite quickly.


Martin & Andrew 4
Sam & Joe 1

Biblios (of the Extreme type) ended with some low scoring dice to fight over.


Adam 7
Katy 5
Ian 1

Then they played NMBR9 while we were finishing off Montage. It appears that Katy is not a fan of this game. Adam, on the other hand...

Adam 111
Ian 65
Katy 46

Then we rearranged again. Now Adam, Sam, Martin and Joe played Polterfass (with fresh margaritas). Ian and I chose Pickomino/Heck Meck as our game, thinking that Katy might be amused at other people's misfortune. Unfortunately the misfortune was all hers. She obsessed over the 27 tile, winning it, losing it, getting it back, and then losing it again. If we’d hoped to get Katy in a better mood, then we had failed. Ian, though, failed more constructively than I did.


Ian 8 (and the 30 tile)
Andrew 8 (and the 29 tiles)
Katy 0

Still needing a pick-me-up for a Katy suffering from a gaming lull, we brought out the big guns: Colour Wheel from Pyramid Arcade. With its bright colours and co-operative ethos, it’s like a board game equivalent of a My Little Pony film. Slowly the mix of shiny plastic and puzzling logic brought out Katy’s better side. And we even solved the puzzle!


By now Polterfass had ended too, with Sam scoring a last-ditch high of 13 points in a round to avoid ending in negative points, which is where he spent most of the game. Adam, though, won again.


Adam 75
Joe 41
Martin 35
Sam 11

They also played another game of Kribbeln which I only know about thanks to the photos on my phone.


I forgot to note the scores, but I did take a photo of the score card near the end. It looks like Joe nicked it in the final round.


Finally, it was time to the finale: Fuji Flush. Ian managed to put a new spin on his reputation of Le Coq Bloquer by repeatedly playing a card that wiped out the chain before I was going to join it. Amazing. Frustrating for me, but it seemed to be a winning strategy.

Ian 0 cards left
Martin 1
Adam 1
Katy 1
Sam 2
Andrew 2
Joe 2

And with that, we were done. Emotionally exhausted and really quite drunk. That’s Tuesday for you!

Saturday 26 August 2017

Matches of the Day

Saturday! Andrew rolled up to the house at 7.30 and Stan joined us for the first game of the evening, which was Ninjato. Stanley had won something like seven in a row of this game, both two-player and with his friend Peppa. It was entirely new to Andrew, and though the mechanics of it are pretty straightforward, the tactics require a little familiarity with the game. Stanley shot off into an early lead at the first scoring round as Andrew had no Envoys (good for scoring) and I only had two second-places behind the Ninja Master.

But it was early days, and we had time to recover. Ninjato requires you to go raiding in order to get treasure, in order to pay for either Envoy cards (good for scoring rounds) or Rumour cards (good for end-game scoring). But both are fraught with danger - in the raids, you may come up against an undefeatable sentry, and in the scoring, you may be out-Envoyed or simply find your Envoys aren't much use.

I managed to haul Stanley - who forewent his usual Rumour-based tactics - back to claim my first win of the night, and also Ninjato itself. Stan clung onto second as Andrew had a debut third place against two grizzled old-timers. As he noted, it's quite a combative game: opponents can see what clans you want to score and simply oust them from the board, making your Envoys almost worthless.

Sam 95
Stan 69
Andrew 66

The dethroned Ninja King now had to retire to bed, so Andrew and I went for another new game to him - Roll Player. This slightly oddball affair takes the best part of role-playing games - the creating of your character - and makes it the entirety of the game, as you roll dice and try to match colours and numbers to your backstory, character and alignment. Interaction isn't high but brain-burning is certainly present, as you try to give your character high enough scores to nab points, whilst also getting the colours of the dice in the right place too.


It was an exceedingly close-run thing too:

Sam 27
Andrew 26

Next up was NMBR9. I utterly love this game - I didn't think you could improve on Take It Easy but I think NMBR9 has pulled it off. We played a 2-plauer variant of going through the deck twice to use all the pieces, and I managed a substantial win:

Sam 256
Andrew 128

Before we played again, with the standard rules, and managed a draw!

Andrew/Sam 71

Next up was Biblios, and what a corker it was. Andrew made it clear he wasn't going for browns as he kept putting the value down. I didn't have any browns when he first did this, but then I kept picking them up! He also managed to feed me 2 gold on a regular basis...



I knew he was after blue dice so tried to stay quietly competitive, but it was in vain: despite picking up three of the five dice, Andrew ended the evening as Mr Biblios:

Andrew 8
Sam 7

He also ended the evening as Mr Push It, as I somehow threw away a 10-7 lead to see Andrew finish the night with two straight victories!

Andrew 11
Sam 10

Thursday 24 August 2017

Ian's Sheep is Exhausted

Wednesday night. After missing the last three (three!!!) Tuesdays, Chris and I agreed to play a post-football game. Ian also joined us, making the trek from Easton for a ludicrous 10pm start!

We played a game I backed on Kickstarter earlier in the year: Tribes: Early Civilisation. This is by the designer of Nations, so it came with some pedigree. Unlike Nations though, it plays in about 40 minutes. But would it be bona fide fun, or Kickstarter Crap (©Martin) ?

 very early doors

The verdict was positive. Maybe not a Martin game - despite more interaction than first appears, it's a brisk Euro - but there's a simple mechanic at play that gives it some intrigue. On your turn you can take one of three basic actions - grow your tribe, explore (adding hexes to your own mini-board) or move the tribes across the land, accessing new hexes - and new resources.

walking, yes indeed

The resources are used for the non-basic action, which is inventing something. Your tribes survive across the paleolithic, neolithic and bronze ages, so some inventions arise. They might be as simple as leather or the wheel, or they might be the surprisingly topical idea of despotism.

Ian's tribes

One invention leads to another, which provided some wry comedy: only after you've invented cooking, for instance, can you become a despot. If you don't have the resources you need to invent something, you can always 'exhaust' a non-matching hex as a joker - flipping it over to it's non-resource side, lost forever. Ian exhausted a couple of sheep this way, in order to invent smelting...

gold needed to invent currency, or mercenaries

Inventing gives you a points reward, and your tribe advances in other ways too - making their basic actions more fruitful, or improving their strength to resist the events that happen from time to time.

But the twist with Tribes is the choosing of the action you take - action tiles are laid out in a vertical time track: the tile at the bottom is free to use, but if you want to take an action further up the track, you must pay a shell - the game's currency - to skip any tiles you're not using. When you use the action tiles you get any shells on it, and the activated tile goes to the top of the time track.

This is the real crux of the game, because if you find yourself with no shells - as both Ian and I did at some stage - you have no choice, and have to take the bottom action tile - yes, I know - even if it's a crappy, punitive event tile that's been added into the mix.

crappy, and punitive

I started well, then Ian surged ahead mid-game, before finally we were both overhauled by Chris, who trotted out a convincing winner:

Chris 34
Sam 28
Ian 27

And at this point - 11pm - Chris left for home, with Ian and I breaking out the whisky. We finished with another new game - Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, making it an evening of semi-colon games. (someone can joke about this in the comments if they like). This is a rather sweet tile-laying game where thematically you're floating lanterns out onto a lake, and mechanically you're trying to collect Lantern cards to cash in for dedications (dedications: victory points).

geometric lake

When you place a tile every player gets a lantern card of the colour facing them on the tile. But if you match colours with any adjacent tiles, you get bonus lanterns. And if you match colours and have a floating platform on the tile, you get favour tokens, which can be used to trade one colour lantern for another. As the dedication tiles demand sets (four of a kind, three pairs or one each of the seven colours) these can come in very handy.

It's sweet, but not without an edge: you can see what your opponent is after and place a tile in order to give them a colour they don't need, or even none at all, as lantern tiles are finite (only five of each colour in a two player game)

endgame

Ian won a tight contest in the first game, and I took the honours in our second. The clock was now
beeping midnight, and we ended honors even. A fun couple of hours, even if 10pm is maybe not going to be a regular start time...

Wednesday 23 August 2017

Seven games, only five results

Due to the staggered times that some of the regulars would be arriving, twice this evening a game was chosen and set up, ready to begin, when a knock on the door signalled a change of plans. The two unlucky games were Santo Domingo (complete with rules explanation from Joe) and Coloretto.

But what about the games we did play? And who did we play them with? Joe hosted, with Katy, Ben, Martin, Andy and me the early arrivals. Ian and Adam were expected later. We began with a short roll & write game called Twenty One. In it each player has a unique score sheet showing a number of rows of coloured dice, each with a value. Working from the top, each player has to use the similarly coloured dice rolled that turn to write in number on these dice, with the proviso that that number must be lower or equal to the one on the sheet. Direct hits will score you a bonus when you complete the row. You can fill in as many as you like, but you must fill in one, even if it is to cross one off completely when the dice roll means you have no legal moves.


Joe had played a few two player games recently with one of his daughters, but I think the overall conclusion was that it doesn't work well with so many players. It's a bit of a luck-fest, since there's no way to keep tabs on what everyone wants.


Katy started well and probably thought she had it in the bag until Ben started cranking out rows in the twenties and thirties. And then Andy snuck in at the end to grab second.

Ben 97
Andy 85
Katy 84
Joe 81
Martin 73
Andrew 62

Not sure why it’s called Twenty One, though.

At this point we set up Santo Domingo, only to be stopped by Adam making his way slowly down the stairs. This gave Katy what she'd been begging for all evening: someone who'd support her request for Ponzi Scheme. "It's been six weeks!" She cried, trying to appeal to our better natures. With Adam on board, Ben followed and Joe agreed to be rules explainer. They set up at the bottom of the stairwell, for a change, and got to work.

Adam's beer

New gaming table arrangement

Martin, Andy and I pondered about a quick three player, and chose Coloretto. Martin was confused by Joe having two copies. He chose "the nice one" (Joe's words) but got confused mid-set-up by the different designs and put it away and then went back to the classic original. And then Ian arrived.

And so we embarked on the Grand Tour of Flamme Rogue. A three-stage road race that needs an app (or a printed score sheet) to keep track of the placings.


It was great. Among all the jostling in the peleton, Martin's sprinter seemed remarkably prime to exhaustion while my rouler often found himself stuck one space shorter than the card I'd played.

In one example, Ian cleverly put his leading cyclists, two abreast right at the start of a hill, meaning my two cyclists got stuck behind him. I called him "le coq blocquer" for his spoiling tactics, but he seemed unconcerned at my anguish

Ian's two cyclists stop me in my tracks

Talking of anguish, midway through our game, Katy called me over to the Ponzi game to take a photo of Joe losing quickly. I did so, but just as I left, Joe handed a black envelope over to Adam with a gleam in his eye. The game didn't end then, so I assume Joe's secret deal was a success.


Ponzi Scheme did finish before we did, though, with both Ben and Joe going bust in the same round.


Adam 10 points
Katy 6 points
Ben -$1
Joe -$200

“That was brilliant,” said Katy. They went on to play Animals on Board.

Flamme Rogue was hotting up, with the third stage in full swing. It was a bit of a nightmare, with a long winding uphill struggle towards the end. The final standings across all three stages were:


Martin 9
Andy 7
Andrew 5
Ian 3


Martin's unused cards

What an encounter. And really quite tense all the way through. No one seemed happy with their cards at any point. In fact, I seem to recall the moaning beginning at the first corner of the first race! But what is sport without moaning about fate? If you don’t complain, it just means you don’t care!

And Animals on Board ended


Katy 40
Adam 38
Joe 31
Ben 28

Then Ben departed. We tried to convince him to stay with Fuji Flush, but his willpower was too strong. Instead, the remaining seven of us watched as Joe got out the absinthe for our final game of the evening.

I was in a good position for the win fairly on, with three high cards in my hand. But I was thwarted and had to rely on good luck to get me some new high cards. I got a 19, and played it just after the deck was recycled since I assumed that the 20 must still be somewhere inside it. Right? Wrong. Ian had it! Le Coq Blocquer lived up to his reputation as he played the 20 that he’d only just picked up from the reshuffled deck!


But I couldn’t be stopped. Martin played 9 and I joined him. Katy played 11 to try and stop us, but then Ian beat her card. Frustratingly (for them, not us) Adam also had an 11! We would have been beaten had Ian not stepped in. But he did, so we did.


Martin 0
Andrew 0
Ian 1
Joe 1
Adam 3
Andy 3
Katy 4

Phew! What an evening. But, then again, aren’t they all?


Wednesday 16 August 2017

It's only roll 'n' write but I like it

The coldest summer for decades slowly passes day by day, and we at GNN feel the chill wind through the empty seats around the kitchen table. This Tuesday there were just five of us at Joe's place, with Katy, Ian, Matt and myself making our respective journeys.

We began with Joe suggesting an evening of Roll and Write, the apparently official name for the genre that involves rolling dice and writing things. First was Kibbeln. A Yahtzee-ish game of getting high scores with six multicolored dice while trying to achieve certain criteria such as "no orange faces showing" or "four of one colour showing".


Then there are the four Kibbeln rounds where each player simply has to score as much as possible. The caveat being the your score must beat your score in a previous Kibbeln round or you're bust and get nothing. How cunning.

Joe introduced us to the game and then got the opposite of Explainer's Curse, winning the first three rounds. I came last each time.


But then Matt pegged Joe back in round two, in which Joe went bust twice. Then in the final epic round, Matt consolidated his lead and more bust rounds even cost Joe second place.

Matt 32
Katy 29
Joe 25
Ian 23
Andrew 19

It was entertaining, if perhaps with five of us, it dragged a little. But it was nice to see Das Exclusive in its full pomp. A marvellous sight.

There was no real desire for more dice rolling, so instead we spent some time staring at Joe's games wall, optimistically saying games' names out loud to resounding indifference.

Eventually we chose another new game - Spice Road. The blurb on the box promised the rich excitement of haggling in a Middle Eastern market, whereas the game manages to distill the basic engine-building mechanic of get stuff to get stuff into a simple card game.



Not to say it was a bad game, but it was somewhat dry. As a sort of four-player puzzle, I enjoyed it. I went for a large hand of cards while the others preferred to recycle their hands much more frequently. It's probably a game where familiarity breeds capability, as the final scores demonstrate:



Joe 75
Katy 60
Matt 59
Andrew 57
Ian 40

When this was done, it was about half past nine, so any thought of a big game was out of the question. Instead, we went for For Sale, openly mocking anyone who took the lowest card for free for following Katy's discredited strategy.

Oddly, despite bidding and hustling with the rest of us, Katy did very badly again. Ian, meanwhile, was very cautious with his bidding at first and then, before I knew it, he was out of cash! He must've overbid for something, but I missed the details.

Joe's second round started in peculiar fashion: first he got $0 with a 17 card, and then got $15k with an 18 card. He also kept bluffing me (with the 29) that he was about to play his 30. Evil Joe. Not evil enough to win, though.

Andrew 61
Joe 52
Matt 51
Ian 43
Katy 34

Next up, since Ponzi Scheme was not an option with five players, Katy's request for Perudo was happily accepted.


Amazingly, it was Matt’s first game so, after a rules explanation, we were in. We showed Matt no mercy as the newbie but first I, then Ian, then Joe hit palafico. But each one of us survived our brush with death.


After Joe’s palafico, the numbers of dice were Katy 3, Matt 2, Joe, Ian and me on one.

Ian was out first, followed by Matt hitting palafico and going out. His bid of two aces failed! Then I fell, leaving Joe vs Katy, with Joe on one lone die, compared to Katy’s three.

Joe then managed to win the next three rounds, with the most remarkable being when it was two dice versus one. Katy bid two threes and Joe went for one ace. Katy said Dudo, and they revealed: Katy had two threes and Joe had one ace! Basically, Katy’s problem was that she was too honest in her bids.

1. Joe
2. Katy
3. Andrew
4. Matt
5. Ian

At this point, Ian retired from the fray, citing an eight o'clock start tomorrow as an excuse. The rest of us showed no such signs of fatigue.

Joe introduced us to another dice game. Das Exclusive was retired in favour of the smaller, rounder dice arena (Das Inclusive?) and we played Noch Mal. A game in which players use a combination of coloured and numbered dice to cross off areas on a scorepad.


Points are scored for columns completed, colours completed and "star squares" crossed off. Joe, once again sped into a lead and, this time, held it.



Joe 27
Katy 20
Andrew 16
Matt 13

Another evening wrapped up. This one more dice-heavy than usual, but fun nevertheless. Thanks all.

Sunday 13 August 2017

Played in Wales

A week in Wales with Mark, Katie, and the four sprogs meant that as well as the beach, chips and ice cream, we got plenty of gaming time as well. I took a couple of bags worth and all but three got played at some stage. Daytimes were often taken up with surfing...

Joe gets a push from Mark

...whereas the night - or the odd patch of rain - was about gaming. The hit of the week with Stanley and Peppa was Ninjato. I touched on this previously, but have since delved further into its depths with another four plays this week. I remain utterly terrible at it, whilst Stan won every time, to mine and Peppa's growing despair. It's fun calling Banzai, though the more I play the less 'lucky' the game feels - it's a tactical battle to keep control of Envoys and start rumours, which are as pertinent here as the cards in Stone Age.

Four skills, but I got nowhere

The early evenings were dominated by Insider, which everyone could and did get involved with. We played too many of these to count, but I was the Insider only once and every other player accused me! The successful Insiders, I noticed, didn't get too vociferous about accusing anyone. Sally was a terrible Insider too, but that was only because as soon as anyone accused her she hid her face in her hands. Mark, Katie and Peppa had the most success, whilst I offset my serial defeats with the joy to be found in the natural world outside:

that black thing is a bottle-nosed dolphin!

The other game that all the kids played was In a Bind - this was the Junior version, where there is marginally less physical challenge but the addition of making animal noises/waving/talking in a deep voice etc when you pick up a card. This is more fun than it might sound after a couple of glasses of the good stuff, but obviously the kids played it sober and seemed to like it too.

Peppa and Joe drew

Peppa, Stan and I also had a few goes at Cobras, which is another one I enjoy without ever getting close to winning. The closest I got was second place with game abandoned due to the late hour and surfing fatigue. I have never been so reluctant to bail on a game!

We managed one game of Near and Far, which my win at made some amends for continual thrashings on the Ninjato board. Mine and Stan's campaign game continues with me holding a slender lead overall...

Peppa and Stanley, both Near

...often the evenings had some kind of dance focus though, with Just Dance 2017 on the Nintendo galvanising all ages - with the exception of Joe - onto the floor. I have promised not to add any photos or videos of this, though, and considering some of them involve a balding tubster with no sense of rhythm, I'm happy to stick to that.

After kids had been scrambled to bed, we struck upon a pattern of Barenpark and Bandu. I had far more success in these arenas than I did Ninja-ing, Cobra-ing or Dancing, although Mark picked up a couple of wins in Barenpark. Tessellating bear houses was Katie's game of the week; in fact, although we also bashed out Wibbell and Honshu as well, Barenpark and Bandu were the nightly staples. Bandu got typically tense, and everyone had to perfect their 'Bandu Breath' - breathing off to one side so as not to disturb the fragile structures on the table...

Katie, breathing east

Late in the week though I thought it was worth introducing Mark to Flamme Rouge, which he fell in love with. It was a drunken Thursday night with everyone else in bed when we played three games in a row, Mark winning 2-1 with a deathly finish on the final race to clinch it!

This tablecloth did my nut in all week

We tried to introduce Katie to this cycling classic on our last night, but she felt she had done enough rule-learning for one week. So we stuck with Barenpark and Bandu, and when the ladies retired to bed Mark and I set up Flamme Rouge for one last race/game of the week; which Mark won, again on the final stretch!

We returned - heavy legged from the beach and heavy headed from margaritas, but sated. A lot of fun - Can't wait for Novocon now!