Wednesday 27 March 2024

Junior Band

What briefly threatened to be a three surged to a six and the first few to arrive - Martin, Katy and Adam T, along with myself - elected to begin the evening with Rankster, reasoning that the others could join us on arrival. Pele was one of the first out of the box - it's getting to be a habit - as Adam was requested to rate his newsreading capacity compared to that of Queen Elizabeth II (great elocution) and Little Red Riding Hood (may not even know the word news). While the rest of us were pondering his rankings Adam H arrived, having initially gone to Joe's house by mistake. "I was too lazy to read the whole thread" he said, rationalising that as Joe was last to reply, we'd be at his house. 


We did okay at Rankster, although Martin was furious with us for proposing a Medusa would be good at pulling faces at a three-year-old. "She'd turn them to stone!" he wailed. Then after Joe arrived and we learned from Adam that the reason John F Kennedy didn't duck was because he wears a corset, the table split into threes. Adam T joined Martin and Joe for a crack at Faraway...


While Adam, Katy and I began our animal assembly duties in Caldera Park, where the goal is to group animals of a type together, and then multiply their number by how many waterholes they connect to for points. The catch is that some tiles contain more than one type of animal, and there are placement restrictions that may force you to put animals where they won't score at all. In fact, they may be killed off by weather. 


Over five rounds players take turns announcing which animal - assuming it's still available - goes on which terrain, and their fellow players must follow suit if they can. But if they can't, their opportunities expand rather than contract - if Katy says 'put a wolf in the forest' and you currently have no wolves, you can put anything you like in the forest. And if all your forest is already covered, you can put a wolf anywhere. If you have neither wolves nor forest available, the world is your oyster. 


In each round a weather tile is added, but these are unpredictable and may wipe out neighbouring animal tiles if you are unlucky. At the end of the game, you tot up your animal score but also accrue points for covering parts of your board (all forest, all river, all waterfalls etc). Katy said she really enjoyed the game right up until the end, when she discovered she'd lost. 

Adam 161
Sam 153
Katy 146

But she still loved the scorepad, even if she wasn't keen on what it had to say. Meantime Faraway, with its curious dynamic of laying out a tableau of cards before scoring them backwards (point-scoring relies on certain symbols being exposed when the card itself is flipped) had been played not once but twice! In the first game there was some mild symmetry to scoring:

Martin 90
Joe 80
Adam T 70

And in the second, Adam took his distant card-flipped revenge:

Adam 74
Joe 65
Martin 64

It was time to do a bit of seat-swapping and so Katy and Adam T switched sides so she, Joe and Martin could play Robo-Trick and I could confuse the Adams by saying 'Adam's turn!' for the next 60 minutes. 


I still haven't played Robo-Trick so I can't explain it but I recall Joe teaching me the rules and it sounded nuts. I think it was nuts, and there was a lot of minus points scored and some chagrin from Katy. Meantime, Adam H's position at the table was identical to when he played Caldera Park, only someone had removed his glasses. 


World Wonders rules are pretty straightforward but the spatial element had Adam T in knots at times and he frowned at his progress as we filled our boards with roads, buildings, and the aforementioned wonders like deistic architects intent on wiping out every last blade of grass. Meantime Martin won Robo Trick:


And to my surprise they began to play Tipperary, even though Martin said "There is literally NO interaction" in his scathingly-dismissive mode. Katy and Martin had both played before but they needed to run through the rules and so spent almost as much time learning them as playing the game itself. 


I missed the drama/lack-of though, as I was spending the last two rounds of World Wonders frustrated at my lack of options. The shitty pyramids had come out which rarely fit anywhere and I couldn't build the other two wonders either, so was literally throwing away gold to pass. Maybe another wonder or two would have made a difference, but we'll never know:

Adam H 33
Adam T/Sam 30 each

And, brief as it is, Tipperary finished too, and as they added up the sheep Adam T wondered if they might nod off halfway through counting. Joe and Martin tied on 94 points each with Katy back on 84. Martin gave a brief recap on the lack of interaction, Adam T headed home and after some further post-Tipperary scathing dismissery, the five of us played Little Tavern.


Perhaps the antidote to Tetris-Ireland's solitaire tile-placement, in Little Tavern we are regularly palming off customers we don't want to each other's tables, and when all tables are full customers will tip according to current table state (or tavern state, which means the real table). Witches like having witches around the place. Elves - or racists, as we referred to them - like having elves at the same table. Dwarves like a mix, Goblins are all called Billy-something and only tip if their leader (Billy-Billy) is present, and so on. Mix in some shenanigans in the form of optional events and this tavern is a fairly dastardly place. 


There are only six events and in both rounds we used them all up. I had an appalling start which may have been explainers curse but was quite likely surrounded-by-dicks. Katy and Adam were in a strong position and found themselves targeted in round two, but it was Katy and Martin who snaffled the shared-win courtesy of some hot elf on elf action:

Martin/Katy 26 each
Sam 25
Adam H 24
Joe 20

Now Adam H took his leave too as the rest of us took our leaves for So Clover. Probably the less said about our first attempt the better, as after a cracking opening (6 points for Martin's tile) we followed it with three pitiful threes, and despite the late hour Katy insisted we play again. This time it wasn't a perfect score either, but 20/24 was a considerable improvement, especially since mine and Katy's red herring card both fit perfectly with two of our clues, Katy's in particular (seen below) reminiscent of Martin's 'portobello' moment.


It was now past 11 though and time to call it a night. Thanks all!

Wednesday 20 March 2024

Does God Play Hab & Gut

Adam, Hannah and Arthur were our hosts last night as we belatedly marked Katy's birthday with cake (brought by Katy) and kicked off the evening with an injection of comestible caterpillar while Arthur loaded the table with potential games we could play. As an eight however - along with the hosts and Katy, there were Martin, Ian, Joe and myself - we settled on Codenames Pictures. I was clue-giver for the Hillmann-Morrison team and Joe clued for everyone else.

We got off to a good start with the team successfully reconciling my clues for mischief before Joe's team hit back, opening with a salvo of success and following it with such wild and wacky clues as 'Linux' (Martin remembered there was a Penguin, Katy spotted a penguin in the cards) and we stumbled on my clue of breakfast as I hadn't spotted a melting clock was actually dribbling out of a saucepan. These are the kind of sentences you don't write about original Codenames!

Joe/Ian/Katy/Martin: clues cracked!
Arthur/Adam/Hannah/Sam: clues crocked

In theory it was now Arthur's bedtime, so we separated into two groups for the evening's main dishes. Ian Adam and Katy ruminated on a Mad King Ludwig rematch before settling on World Wonders after Katy saw the bits. Martin took Joe and I into the other room and talked us through Dawn of Ulos, which he'd been sent to review. 


The game wears its influences on its sleeve, apparently, being a mash-up of Acquire in it's shareholding and takeovers and Tigris & Euphrates in how said takeovers are resolved: here, rather than investing in buildings we are backing various factions on the map. Each turn you must play a tile that will strengthen an existing faction or perhaps introduce (or re-introduce) a new one, which are triggered by available spaces their (plastic mini) leaders can sit on. Then you may either buy up to three cards in any faction, or sell one card for its sale value, in which case you also trigger its faction-specific ability. 

As tiles are added the factions grow in strength: each one gains 1 strength for the terrain types it likes to control (2 types per faction). But as they grow in strength they also become more expensive to buy, and tempting to sell. The catch being if you sell, you are sacrificing valuable cards for their sale value, whereas at the end of the game they'll be worth their higher strength value. 


So  there are already some chewy decisions, but that's before we get to the combat/takeover, where the Tigris comparison takes over: when any of these faction-controlled terrains join up, play is suspended until the battle to control all of the connected terrain is resolved. This is a comparison of current strength, plus any matching faction cards any or all players want to contribute to boost the strength of either (or both) sides. Another catch: you must sell at least half of any cards you put towards battle, and don't get to trigger the ability. 


Whew. While we were all at degrees of bamboozlement, the vibe in the kitchen was slightly less furrowed, as various wonders were built around the pleasing mini-conurbations. 

Back on Ulos, I had concerns over Martin's Ratfolk - not actually his, but I knew he had a lot of Ratfolk cards - and I invested a fair bit of time destabilising them by pillaging - placing cubes on the terrain they like to reduce their strength. 


Then I triggered a battle where, thanks to my surfeit of Goblins, I won. Martin rued his decision to not commit more of the furry little shits to the cause, but it was too late: the Ratfolk were off the board and needed re-establishing. Joe, meanwhile, fretted over the Sheki being either absent or seemingly under-powered, but his late-game push to embolden them - and a face-off with the Orcs that I foolishly supported myself - pushed the Sheki into a more rewarding spot, and Joe into a convincing debut win:

Joe 100
Martin 89
Sam 88

(Last night I was actually second, but a rules clarification this morning pushed me into third!). 

We were all intrigued, if not fully in love. If the idea of Gods being shareholders is a stretch, the fantasy theme kind of suits what's happening on the board. The rules aren't onerous, but the ramifications of each action are, which means not only calculations of current worth and future potential but, ideally, having an idea of what cards your opponents hold. It's kinda bananas, like Hab & Gut's shares crossed with Ethnos' area control crossed with something a bit more combative. 

Or, as others have said, Acquire with T&E. I just haven't played Acquire. 

In the kitchen they had finished as well, with Adam taking the win!




Both games had taken a surprisingly long time, with the hour now past ten. We regrouped together and played co-operative Hitster, the Timeline-style game of placing musical hits in chronological order. This was mostly notable for the weird song about sailors at the docks and all of us being appalled that Beyonce's Crazy in Love is now 21 years old. TWENTY ONE YEARS! That's older than the blog, which feels like it started when Simon & Garfunkel were in the pop charts. Here you can see our bewilderment. 



With the game not having an 'official' co-op iteration, we agreed to play until we failed ten times, and did reasonably well, almost running out of table. Joe's Steely Dan-era knowledge helped us in the 60's and 70's and Ian's ear for production values often clarified things later. I only turned thirty in 2000 but anything after 1990 seemed a mystery to me, and my guesses were usually wayward. Overall though, a more than decent stab and a fun way to end the evening!


So thank you to our hosts, many happy returns to Katy and kudos to Ulos for giving us an unusual experience. As we left, Martin remarked that someone born when Crazy in Love came out would now be graduating University, and it completely ruined the mood. Until next week!



Friday 15 March 2024

Once more unto the beach

 This week, six gamers arrived at Joe’s house in alphabetical order (Adam, Adam, Andrew, Ian, Martin, Sam) for another dose of gaming goodness. This was my first games night in a few weeks and immediately people started making jokey references to a game that I knew nothing about. How swiftly things move on without you.

We split into two groups. A quartet (Martin, Adam T, Adam H, Joe) played Challengers! Beach Party. Ian asked what new features this variant had and Adam ummed and ahhed a bit before saying “different cards”. Oh, and each player has their own special power and there’s some kind of change in the drafting method. Nothing to do with beaches, as far as I could tell.


The trio (myself, Ian and Sam) played World Wonders, a tile-placement tessellation game that allows players to build famous historical buildings with little concern for cultural or temporal fidelity. For example, Ian built Easter Island’s famous statues of Maoi near his Trojan Horse. It’s a nice game, nothing groundbreaking but fun. I build the pyramid complex at Giza for two points, even though it covered three natural resources, costing me a potential three points. A bad move, strategically, but it looked nice on my board. The scores were so close, they needed a recount.


Ian 37
Sam 36
Andrew 35

Challengers was still ongoing, so we set up Little Tavern. This is a silly, dickish game where a player picks a card at random and decides if they want to keep it at their table or place it at someone else’s. There are event cards, allowing characters to be swapped, removed or added to a table face down so that no one else knows what it is. If you get the right people sitting at your desk, then you can score big points. Ian cleverly got three romantics around his table which, instead of being the start of a menage a trois, actually got him 20+ points.


Ian 35
Sam 35
Andrew 30

Around this time, Challengers ended. Martin had won four out of the first five games, but it was Adam H v Joe in the final, with Adam coming out the winner.

After this, we reshuffled. This time the quartet (Ian, Sam, Adam and Adam) played Forest Shuffle, a game that looks lovely but I know little about. Halfway through Adam T said that he was enjoying it, but he wasn’t sure if anyone else was.


I was involved in a game of Faraway, an odd game with a wafer thin theme of going on a journey tacked onto a quite brain-burning card placement game. The idea is to put down cards that then score bonuses according to other cards in your tableau. However, in a normal game the cards would all be visible when you add up your scores, in this game that cards are revealed in reverse order and bonuses only score for whatever’s visible at the time. For example, you play a card that scores 15 points if you have three stone cards and then you have to make sure that you later play three stone cards otherwise that card is worthless when it gets turned over. There’s a certain amount of player interaction such as when Martin looked at Joe’s cards and said “What are you collecting…. Pineapples?” and I asked Joe when had Martin started calling him Pineapples.


We played twice. I managed to grab a fifth stone card right at the end which meant my 24pointer card was valid when it was revealed!

Joe 81
Martin 72
Andrew 48

Andrew 84
Joe 80
Martin 63

I had to go at this point. Any regrets I had about leaving Martin and Joe as a couple were dispelled when Martin said the next game worked better as a two-player.

I don’t know what that game was, but when Forest Shuffle ended the scores were (according to Sam’s memory)

Adam T 125
Sam 125
Adam H 116
Ian 96

Then five of them played So Clover and “did rather well”. Looking at the photo I have to tip my hat to the audacity of clueing “Water” when “river” was one of the words on a different side.


Rather well out of 30

Thanks all. See  you next week.

Wednesday 6 March 2024

Fibonacci Secrets

With the family soon to move house, we joined Steve, Anja and Louie at Stepney Walk last night (Lennon was in bed) for the final time before they box up in earnest. Katy and I were a little late and arrived to find Adam H, Ian and Martin in a discussion about chairs. Louie went off to change into a onesie, Anja appeared, and we settled straight away into two groups, the hosts plus Ian and Martin playing Old London Bridge...


While the rest of us - belatedly joined by Laura, who formed a semi-co-op with Katy - went to battle in the Robot Quest Arena. 


This is apparently Louie's favourite game, maybe because of the lovely minis or maybe because of the moreish deck-building and rapid turns. But probably because he kicked the crap out of all of us, with only Katy and Laura getting anywhere close to competitive with him.


Channeling the anti-Martin, this is the first time in a long while I've heard anyone cry out that the game 'just isn't long enough'. It was for me though:

Louie 28
Katy and Laura 26
Adam 19
Sam 11

London Bridge was still ongoing/falling down (not actually sure what happens) and Louie had time for one quick game before bed. Despite its alleged 45mins playtime on the box, I was pretty certain we'd get through Tipperary significantly faster than that. Maybe the ticking clock is why I forgot to take pictures, but here's one I made earlier:


Over ten rounds players simultaneously add tiles to their bucolic Irish idyll, putting distilleries next to grain, lining up ruins to get towers and proliferating sheep with which to make jumpers/stew. There's a few different ways to score but a critical one is the fact your largest unbroken rectangle will get a point per square in it, something Katy had to be reminded of mid-game and spent the subsequent rounds in a state of crestfallen anxiety, occasionally casting mild aspersions at me.

Laura 89
Sam 86
Adam 79
Katy and Louie 61 each. 

While this was happening, Old London Bridge came to a conclusion!

Martin 54
Ian 44
Steve 42
Anja 38

Louie said his goodnights but Laura and Katy were both keen to go again on Tipperary, with Martin subbing in for our departee. Again, I didn't take any pictures, so here's another one from earlier, showing how tiles (a choice of two each round) get allotted, using a spinner:


While we polyominoed with intermittent cries of Banshee grief, the others played Misfits, and again, I neglected to snap pics! Sorry. I'm not even sure who won, but I think it was Steve. There was definitely a huge collapse at one point...

Over on our side of the table, Martin led the way on flocks for most of the game, but Katy herded some extras her way at the death to claim the biggest flock bonus. But with her geometric confusion now out of the way, she didn't even need it to claim the laurels!

Katy 89
Adam 78
Laura 75
Sam 69
Martin 68

Laura now left us as well and we shuffled seats, with Anja, Steve, Ian and Martin playing Gang of Dice. 


Whilst Katy and I took on the unenviable task of playing Adam at Ticket to Ride: Berlin. 


Somehow I managed to convince myself I was in with a shout, but I'd missed that Katy and Adam both had three tickets to cash in at the end. And unfortunately for Katy, she now realised she hadn't completed one of them. 

Adam 49
Katy 40
Sam 39

Fuelled by no more than resentment, jealously and immaturity, Katy and I both decided to pretend Adam hadn't won. But it got confusing when we couldn't agree on who had.


Meanwhile, despite "pissing around with a single die" (-Martin) Steve wrapped up Gang of Dice with a very convincing win. 

Steve 73
Ian 51
Martin 29
Anja 9

"Not my game" said Anja. 

We decided to round off the night with So Clover before realising nobody had So Clover. Similar confusion -mostly on my part - about Fun Facts followed, before we settled on a very funny episode of Just One, punctuated by Martin's slightly lewd grunting noises whenever he felt someone could use a prompt. 


Steve's first word as guesser was 'Series' and two of our clues (Television) were duplicates, leaving him with the following:


Steve said 'sequence' aloud, but not in a way that sounded like his final guess. Apart from his occasionally wailing "Thrones?" at the ceiling, this ten-minute chapter of the evening was largely Steve's Existential Crisis and the rest of us being Increasingly Unsympathetic. 


Sorry Steve. He gave up in the end, only to find that his next word was similarly tricky (Crepe) and Katy's clue of Póo was apparently no help, especially in that it seemed to combine with other clues of tissue and paper in a possibly misdirectonal way. Nevertheless, Katy kept saying Poo in an exaggerated French accent, hoping Steve could make the breakthrough... but no. In fairness to Steve, both tricky words and probably not helped by us all giggling and Martin's sexually suggestive noises. 

We scored a pretty shabby 7/13, I don't remember how the rulebook judges that but I don't think it's very effusive. A very entertaining end to the last night at Stepney Walk though! 

Wednesday 28 February 2024

The Happy Filcher

Games night arrived again, and so did the gamers. Adam T was first to materialise and chatted with Sally whilst I freshened up and bought beer and Quavers. Then Martin, Joe, Adam H and Ian all came through the door and we got cracking, kicking things off with a six-player Phantom Ink. 


Adam T and I teamed with Joe (our happy medium) and Adam H and Ian were ethereally clued-to by Martin. The secret word, unbeknownst to us, was Helicopter. We asked Joe would would happen if you buried it for a year, and he replied with SYC, which we figured to be sycamore. But Ian and Adam H figured it too, and Adam T's eureka moment prompted them to guess, knowing already that the study of whatever the word was began with AER. They jumped in ahead of us and guessed correctly, ending the game after about five minutes!

We split into threes with Martin, Adam T and Joe all keen to wrestle with Carl Chudyk's cards-with-a-billion-uses battle of Aegean Sea. I introduced Ian and Adam to World Wonders, with its delightful wooden bits. 



In World Wonders, we're buying buildings each round - and occasionally, wonders as well - and trying to surround them on our board; surrounded building being worth points. Connecting to natural resources is also points, and so is the lowest-value resource on your player board, in a mildly Knizian twist. We found that the flexible towers were at a premium, and unsurprisingly Adam regularly bought what I wanted from market. Ian began fretting that he was going to be last, despite the alluring cluster of wonders he'd built on his board.


I'm not sure what was happening in Aegean Sea, except for the general vibe of chaotic overwhelm, with Martin exclaiming "This is mental!" several times. I am vaguely aware that each player has an 'island' upon/under which they can play cards that Do Things. Like Innovation, how the cards combine in a given game can vary the experience massively, and there's more than one possible endgame I believe. At one point Adam announced he'd won, before Martin explained to him that he hadn't.


We wrapped up World Wonders to find to nobody's shock that Adam had won:

Adam 36
Sam 33
Ian 32

And began playing Misfits, which I didn't realise Adam hadn't played yet. He kicked things off by placing a column in the middle of the table, and I thought this wouldn't last long. But it did.


After about 6 minutes though we were running out of options, and someone was going to take the fall. That someone turned out to be me when I rejected the idea of placing my last cube and tried to shed a column, with catastrophic results, The entire thing fell, including the base, and Ian started a new tower from scratch:


Which despite our best efforts at sabotaging him, Adam won in short order. And, after Martin accused Joe of being a filcher and he turned to beam radiantly at me, unfortunately too briefly for me to get a photo, Aegean Sea finished at the same time!

Joe 13
Martin 10
Adam 6

Who knows what occurred, or if it'll ever make the table again. Everyone seemed happy to experience it though. New groups assembled with with Joe leading the Adams off to play Robo Trick and Martin cajoling Ian and I to play Armadora, possibly the ugliest game I have ever seen, with some artwork that is so generic it's almost not, and an everything-dipped-in-honey glossy finish. This photo sadly fails to capture the dazzling sheen whenever any light caught the surface.


But the game itself is dickish fun. There is a shared board with a bunch of gold scattered around it. On our turn we can either place one of our tiles somewhere on the board, or place two 'palisades' (wooden bits) that divide the board into smaller territories, with the caveat that no territory can be smaller than four squares. 


Although our tiles have varying number values (most are ones, but there are 2's, 3's and a 4) and they are placed face-down, the palisades are what really make the game spicy, as we all try to cordon each other's tiles off from the juicy gold. When there's nothing left to place all is revealed and the player/s with the highest tile value in each region claim the gold. I'd ducked out of a couple of battles in one part of the board, and it turned out well for me, as Martin snagged two big areas from Ian:

Sam 19
Martin 18
Ian 3

Meantime Robo-Trick was still going and unfortunately I cannot illuminate what was happening, as I've never played it and was distracted by Armadora. But we had a couple of cracks at Accuse! in the meantime...



The first one I ended too soon by taking a bit of a wild guess, holding two characters in my hand making me somewhat overoptimistic. There wasn't enough info for either Ian or Martin to subsequently figure out the murder, but we played again and this time Martin ended things, but found his accusations unfounded. I was next to go and took my first win of a game I am pretty shite at. 

Robo Trick finished as well with the happy filcher taking another win!

Joe 2
Adam H 0
Adam T -7

And with a bit of a drive ahead of him, Adam T bade his farewells and left the five of us to play MLEM, the bonkers luck-pushing cats-in-space area-control and moons game. 


Ian set off for the various moons (moon bonus) as Martin and I raced for the planets (planet bonus) and Joe's previous strategy of going for Deep Space at every opportunity was tweaked to just doing so now and again. Adam played shrewdly, as one might expect, but found now and again that shrewdness and dice do not make good bedfellows. After a lot of dice-chucking and several rocket explosions, I chickened out of the active mission just in time - ka-boom - and ended the game by placing my last cat. 

Sam 32
Joe 24
Adam 20
Ian 15
Martin 10

And that was that! Thanks all, it was golden.