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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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New-to-me games
Lots of stuff I liked but nothing that absolutely blew me away this month. Picking the one I expect to get more play out of soon.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal - 1 play - 7
First Published 2022/pic6940449.png)
There are recognisable elements of Flamme Rouge here, but it's been impressively retooled to evoke a very different type of race. I really enjoyed the random card-flips adding an element of risk and unpredictability and the push-your-luck heat system may be even cleverer than the exhaustion in Flamme Rouge. Looking forward to more plays.
Block Party - 3 plays - 7
First Published 2023/pic7321926.jpg)
This is basically Pictionary but building pictures/models out of a ton of coloured cubes. The challenges to use the fewest cubes, build the tallest structure etc. mix things up nicely. Really fun, but very colourblind unfriendly!
Sun Tzu - 2 plays - 7
First Published 2005/pic2210749.jpg)
This was a bit different to what I was expecting, but not in a bad way. Having seen a map of areas and some dudes to place on them, I thought it would be more about moving the dudes around and fighting over areas. But in fact the game is almost all a psychological battle of card play, with 5 cards programmed each turn trying to anticipate what the other player will have placed in the same spot.
Wits & Wagers Family - 2 plays - 7
First Published 2010/pic664569.jpg)
Just what I was hoping for - simplified scoring and well-chosen questions that allowed my daughter and her grandparents to participate equally.
nana - 1 play - 7
First Published 2021/pic7227031.jpg)
Played on BGA. It's a very simple and rather nice memory game - pretty much classic flip-for-matches Memory but with some of the cards in players' hands so there's a bit of hand management and bluffing.
Bus - 1 play - 7
First Published 1999/pic4908538.jpg)
Splotters are a weird gap in my gaming knowledge but this has been consistently recommended as the one I might like. It was... OK? I think a 5p game wasn't ideal for learning. The rules were straightforward enough but planning a whole round was a bit beyond me, and I finished my game a good half-hour before everyone else with a grand total of 4. Really not sure about the single placement spot that resets all the careful planning. Would play again with fewer, but won't be rushing to acquire a copy.
Mind Up! - 1 play - 6
First Published 2023/pic7333215.png)
Somewhat 6 nimmt-like simultaneous play followed by resolution in card order, but the scoring focus is on players' individual areas rather than the centre which makes it harder to read what people might play. Inoffensive though.
Other gaming highlights
Considering I played basically no games for the first two weeks of the month, things really escalated! I had a great 2p games day with geekbuddy Mark Wilson while visiting my in-laws in Cincinnati and also a fun time at a new Bristol gaming event with some friends from work.
And then there was LoBsterCon, my first since 2019 and it was so good to be back amongst old friends. 43 plays of 24 games, only one of them new-to-me and even that was 25 years old (Bus). More details at Games played at LoBsterCon XXIV - the first page is basically all my plays.
10 Babylonia (39 all-time)
10 Cosmic Encounter (40 all-time)
10 Doppelkopf (25 all-time)
10 Innovation (94 all-time)
10 Ra (79 all-time)
10 So Clover! x2 (77 all-time)
10 Strike x15 (91 all-time)
10 Tigris & Euphrates (67 all-time)
9 Impulse (27 all-time)
9 Mille Fiori (16 all-time)
9 No Mercy (38 all-time)
9 Northern Pacific (12 all-time)
9 Sea Salt & Paper (33 all-time)
9 Stephenson's Rocket (11 all-time)
8 Brian Boru: High King of Ireland (9 all-time)
8 Challengers! x2 (5 all-time)
8 Gambler × Gamble! (4 all-time)
8 Nokosu Dice x2 (12 all-time)
8 The Quest for El Dorado (9 all-time)
8 Wandering Towers (9 all-time)
7 Block Party (3 all-time)
7 Bus NEW!
7 Gang of Dice x3 (7 all-time)
7 Ready Set Bet (3 all-time)
Reading
The Ohio trip meant lots of time for reading, both on the journey and while we were there. Got back on track for my reading goal of 50 per year.
Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole
A historical novel set in West Yorkshire where I grew up and wow does his poetic writing capture the landscape well. It tells the (true) story of the late 18th century Cragg Vale Coiners, a gang of coin-forgers working from a remote farm, and how they were eventually brought down. Grisly in parts and very engrossing throughout.
Jonathan Coe, House of Sleep
Coe is one of my favourite authors but I'm into his less well-known books now and as you might expect, they aren't quite as good. Still lots to like though in a story of university acquaintances coincidentally thrown back together years on.
Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood
Catton has only written three books - I loved her first one but have only seen the TV series of The Luminaries which was her big Booker-Prize-winning hit. This was an interesting book - it starts pretty slowly introducing us to the characters in a 'guerrilla gardening' group in New Zealand and poking a bit of fun along the way. But half-way through it takes a hard twist towards thriller territory and... well I won't spoil the ending.
Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads
I like to read a Big American Novel on a big American trip, and this one was very big and very American. I'd not read any Franzen before but I understand this is pretty typical for him - switching perspective between five members of an unhappy family, this one in the Chicago suburbs in the early 1970s, with lashings of religion and guilt. The only disappointment was the telescoping in the last 100 pages or so, which made it feel much more like a setup for the next book in the trilogy than a complete work on its own.
Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier
A picaresque satire about a character who is christened Not Sidney. It was very funny in the parts I got, but the multiple parodies of Sidney Poitier films passed me by as I don't think I've seen any of them...
Benjamin Myers, The Offing
After enjoying The Gallows Pole (above) so much I thought I'd try another. We're still in Yorkshire, but over on the coast just after WWII. The language is equally poetic but here the landscape is a soothing balm rather than threatening and wild. An adolescent boy meets an elderly woman and they forge an unlikely friendship. A little overly sentimental but some beautiful writing.
Arkady Martine, Rose House
Martine's duology of sci-fi novels A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace were among my favourites of the last several years so I was excited to see this novella appear. It's about an AI-enabled house and its dead architect and has a terrifically spooky atmosphere, but I think I'd have preferred a longer book - there wasn't much time for development of either character or plot.
Kamila Shamsie, Best of Friends
Her previous book, Home Fire, was excellent but this was a little disappointing. The first third telling the story of a friendship between two fourteen-year-old girls in Karachi in 1988 was really enjoyable and showed me things I didn't already know anything about. But the rest of the book continuing their story as forty-somethings in London 2019 felt much more predictable and sometimes trite.
Listening
On the other hand there was less opportunity for listening and no live music. The Oracle Sisters album Hydranism is very charming and spring-like.
Others I enjoyed were new ones from Silver Moth (featuring Stuart from Mogwai), Feist, Rose City Band, William Tyler (live album) and Easy Star All-stars, a reggae/dub remake of Ziggy Stardust.
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Archive for qwertymartin
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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New-to-me games
Aristocracy - 1 play - 7
First Published 2019/pic4910471.jpg)
One of the "Reinerssance" games that has gone under the radar, but as with Tajuto, that's not a sign of poor quality. The artwork on this one is far from the best and the setup is fiddly but once we were into the game we really enjoyed the snappy rhythm. It reminded me most of Africa (flipping tiles from a big central display) and Blue Lagoon (multi-faceted scoring with connection, collection and area control elements).
The next three were all online with members of the OG Guild, resurrecting some under-appreciated gems.
Muscat - 1 play - 7
First Published 2001/pic696655.jpg)
Liked the sound of this obscure OG enough to make a playingcards.io room for it. It's one of those opaque shared incentive things and felt like it had a lot in common with Bridges of Shangri-La.
Armadöra (aka Nuggets) - 1 play - 7
First Published 2003/pic2404104.jpg)
I'd played this once before asynch but this was my first real-time game and also first time with 4p, which is played as 2v2 teams. It's a really simple and quick OG in which each turn you either add fences to gradually divide the playing area up or add control markers that will be used to determine who wins each of the eventual areas. The control markers range in value from 1-4 but you play them face-down, which adds unpredictability and bluff. The team version was interesting because you total yours and your partner's control markers when resolving areas, but you don't even know what your partner has played.
Owner's Choice - 1 play - 7
First Published 2006/pic195820.jpg)
A wild and very quick stock market game - definitely keen to play again now I've seen how it plays out.
Joraku - 1 play - 6
First Published 2015/pic7049926.jpg)
Trick-taking plus area-control sounds like a great mix for me, but I didn't love the way you keep interrupting tricks to spend a bunch of action points. Would definitely play again though.
Mada - 3 plays - 6
First Published 2022/pic6980439.png)
A cute little lemur-themed cardgame with colourful art that I thought might work for family and gamers. It's a 'stay alive as long as you can' game where each turn you either add a hand card to a personal pile of ascending numbers, draw a card from the deck, or 'try your luck' by flipping a card straight from the deck to your pile, busting (and ending the round) if it's unplayable. The neat thing is that when someone busts, all the other players score the top card on their personal pile, with the higher cards being worth more points. So you don't want to play it too safe as then you'll end up hardly scoring anything. Playing OR drawing gives it a slightly stilted rhythm compared to the familiar play AND draw and I think it might be just OK, not great.
Sleeping Queens 2: The Rescue - 1 play - 6
First Published 2022/pic6783361.png)
It was Effie's 7th birthday and I'd spotted this in the local games shop as she really enjoys the original. It's pretty cool - shares the charming artwork and minor mathematical element of the original but adds a few more bits and pieces (possibly too many!). A nice feature is that your 'hand' is face-up so it's easy to help out with explaining what different cards do. Oh and I also liked that this time it's the queens who are rescuing the kings.
Other gaming highlights
An online session of the brilliant Doppelkopf and some games with visiting friends, including a very welcome return to Abluxxen. Loads of amazing asynch T&E on BGA. Oh and co-hosting The OG Guild's Podcast!
Reading
Sour Grapes, Dan Rhodes
I've read and enjoyed all of Rhodes' books but this one from 2021 had somehow passed me by. He works out his frustrations with the publishing industry through a very silly parody of a literary festival in a sleepy English village. Fun!
Winter, Ali Smith
This rather confirmed the feeling I had after reading Autumn that while there's a lot to admire in Ali Smith's writing, I'm not sure I really get her.
Listening
A bit of a quiet month for new releases, though there are loads out today that I want to listen to. Favourites were The Reds, Pinks and Purples The Town That Cursed Your Name and Lonnie Holley's Oh Me, Oh My
Live music-wise there was a very pretty gig from Florist and a lively ceilidh dance!
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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Total plays: 154
Distinct games: 63
New-to-me games: 17
Dimes: 2 - So Clover! (14), Sea Salt & Paper (10)
Nickels: 8 - No Mercy (9), Excape (8), Mille Fiori (8), Spots (7), Strike (7), Longboard (5), Incan Gold (5), Marrakech (5)
A couple of meet-ups with old gaming friends and some more online OGs supplemented the usual diet.
Now a look at the collection.
Acquired: 4 - Longboard, Excape, Mada, Aristocracy
Removed: 2 - High Treason: The Trial of Louis Riel, Port Royal
Owned: 277
Unplayed: 2 - Res Publica, Uruk: Wiege der Zivilisation
Pretty modest, especially as Knizias don't count
Best new-to-me: Challengers! is a lot of fun and Excape the best of the new-to-me Knizias.
10 6 nimmt! x3 (196 all-time)
10 Babylonia x2 (37 all-time)
10 Doppelkopf x2 (24 all-time)
10 So Clover! x14 (71 all-time)
9 Cross Clues x2 (59 all-time)
9 Just One (48 all-time)
9 Linko! (27 all-time)
9 Mandala (21 all-time)
9 MarraCash (9 all-time)
9 Mille Fiori x8 (15 all-time)
9 No Mercy x9 (35 all-time)
9 Sea Salt & Paper x10 (30 all-time)
9 Strike x7 (70 all-time)
8 Caesar!: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (12 all-time)
8 Can't Stop x2 (13 all-time)
8 Challengers! x3 NEW!
8 Escape from the Hidden Castle x4 (57 all-time)
8 Great Plains (17 all-time)
8 High Society (8 all-time)
8 Marrakech x5 (37 all-time)
8 Quirky Circuits (11 all-time)
8 Riftforce (8 all-time)
8 San Francisco x2 (10 all-time)
8 Schnipp & Weg x2 (17 all-time)
8 Set & Match x2 (10 all-time)
8 Sheepy Time (5 all-time)
8 Spicy (17 all-time)
8 Spots x7 (14 all-time)
8 Tea for 2 (15 all-time)
8 The Field of the Cloth of Gold (18 all-time)
8 Wandering Towers (8 all-time)
8 Wavelength (19 all-time)
8 Whale Riders (7 all-time)
7 Aristocracy NEW!
7 Armadöra NEW!
7 Castello Methoni (2 all-time)
7 Coupell NEW!
7 Dragon's Breath (16 all-time)
7 Ethnos (8 all-time)
7 Excape x8 NEW!
7 Gang of Dice (3 all-time)
7 Incan Gold x5 (41 all-time)
7 Into the Blue (10 all-time)
7 King Up! (2 all-time)
7 L.L.A.M.A. x2 (40 all-time)
7 Longboard x5 NEW!
7 Muscat NEW!
7 Owner's Choice NEW!
7 Vidrasso x2 NEW!
7 Viva Pamplona! x2 NEW!
6 Chicken Cha Cha Cha x2 (8 all-time)
6 Gold Fever x2 (9 all-time)
6 Joraku NEW!
6 Junk Art (2 all-time)
6 Mada x3 NEW!
6 My First Carcassonne (5 all-time)
6 Sleeping Queens (10 all-time)
6 Sleeping Queens 2: The Rescue NEW!
6 Who's who NEW!
5 Akropolis x2 NEW!
5 K3 NEW!
5 Ninety-Nine x2 (4 all-time)
5 Terracotta Army NEW!
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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New-to-me games
Viva Pamplona! - 1 play - 7
First Published 1992/pic1111577.jpg)
Sam picked up this ancient Kramer roll & move which was a lot of fun. It reminded me a bit of his Midnight Party, in which the players try to hide from a randomly-moving 'ghost'. Here it's a bull, and you want to stay close to it to earn 'courage' points. There's more take-that than in Midnight Party too, if you outnumber other players on a space you can shove them off it.
Vidrasso - 2 plays - 7
First Published 2021/pic7096204.png)
One of Sean Ross's many recent designs, this one smoothly implemented on BoardGameArena. It's a 2p trick-taker with a nice system of more powerful cards being worth fewer points when captured and a tricky 'must either follow *or* trump' rule.
Coupell - 1 play - 7
First Published 2017/pic3931135.jpg)
Designer Bez invited me to an asynch game of this on BGA (which I didn't log) and then I showed it to Sam, as we both have Wibbell decks already. It's a charming co-op spelling game where each player has to help the other make words from their conveyor belt of letters, and ensure that both players get the same score by the end of the game.
K3 - 1 play - 5
First Published 2021/pic6279054.png)
Colourful abstract that reminded me a bit of Knizia's Penguin Party as you're collectively building a pyramid where each piece has to be supported by at least one of a matching colour. But in this one the pieces you get to play come from dismantling a personal pyramid that you have to build right at the start of the game. That felt like too much planning.
Other gaming highlights
Meet-ups with a couple of old gaming friends who were visiting Bristol - one who I hadn't seen for over a decade.
Reading
The Yips, Nicola Barker
This had the zany characters and zippy dialogue I've come to expect from Barker, but I think they work better in a shorter form. 550 pages with no real plot was a bit exhausting, despite all the fun along the way.
An Experiment in Criticism, CS Lewis
(If you've read this, you will probably find the idea of giving it a star-rating as amusing as I do.) Lewis argues for judging literature as great not for how it is written but how it is read. Great literature rewards re-reading, while most 'unliterary' readers are content to read books only once to 'use' rather than 'receive' them. This was an interesting challenge to me as someone who almost never re-reads books, but still likes to think I appreciate their literary qualities as well as their plot. Some of the framing of sex and class is very 'of its time' but his argument isn't as elitist as it appears at times and I enjoyed his defence of sci-fi. The biggest compliment that I can pay is that I am sure I would get more out of it if I read it again (I'm just not sure I'll have time!).
Listening
Loads of good new stuff this month - Young Fathers' infectious Heavy Heavy and Lisa O'Neill's haunting All of This is Chance probably the top picks, but closely followed by Hamish Hawk, Gina Birch, Anna B Savage, MF Tomlinson, Quasi and Yo La Tengo.
Two good gigs too, both with bands that rocked harder than I'd expected from their records: Hamish Hawk aboard a boat on Bristol harbour and Dry Cleaning, supported by the enjoyable Dehd.
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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New-to-me games
Challengers! - 3 plays - 8
First Published 2022/pic7040521.jpg)
I'd been curious about this for a while based on W Eric Martin's write-up and so I was pleased when a friend bought a copy. Curiously it seems the 'theme' is 'auto battler video games', where most of the decisions are about choosing the units that are in your army and then you match up against another player's to see who wins, with few decisions involved at that stage. In Challengers that takes the form of a multi-round tournament, with each round pairing the players off into 1v1 matches, so you have to keep moving round the table following your 'tournament plan' card. Between each match, you get to draw 5 cards from the appropriate deck (gradually increasing in power), keep 2, and trash as many as you want.
The battles resolve very simply - you just shuffle your deck and then take turns flipping cards from the top and resolving any effects. You have to keep flipping until your power matches your opponent's at which point you 'capture the flag' and your most-recently-revealed card becomes the card they have to match in turn. Each time your opponent captures the flag, you have to discard all your previously-played cards to your 'bench', which is essentially 6 discard piles, each of which can only hold one type of card (of which you can have multiple copies in your deck).
There are two ways to lose a battle: one is by running out of cards and so not being able to match your opponent's last play; the other is by over-filling your bench i.e. having to discard a 7th type of card. So there's a tension between having a big deck which won't run and not wanting too many different types of cards. This encourages you to add duplicate cards to your deck and then find other cards that combo well with them. The only decisions you make during a battle are how to resolve certain effects as they are revealed, so each battle is over very quickly - 5 minutes or so.
The winner of each battle receives a trophy which is worth a certain amount of points - these escalate in value each round, which makes sense as the first couple of rounds are pretty random as you haven't had chance to sculpt your deck yet. After 7 rounds, the two players with the highest scores play off in a final with no further additions to their deck (trashing is allowed though).
The first game was just about seeing what happened, but in the second I was able to plan and build a really fun deck. In the third game I tried a very different one which didn't work nearly so well (and sometimes you do just get hosed by the order your cards come out). Lots of fun!
Longboard - 4 plays - 7
First Published 2022/pic6688292.png)
Yet another Knizia in the Lost Cities/Keltis family - as usual we're building sets of ascending cards in different colours, but here your hand is open and other players can take cards from it by giving you cards worth a higher total value (but preferably not in useful suits!). Seems really good with 3 and very interactive.
Excape - 3 plays - 7
First Published 1998/pic440763.jpg)
Another Knizia, this one a simple and fun push-your-luck dice game. I've played with 3 and 6 so far and I think the sweet spot will be between the two.
Who's who - 1 play - 6
First Published 0/pic4943665.jpg)
Another wacky Parlett standard-deck trick-taker. This one's 3p only, and the two players who get dealt jokers are secret partners (or the two players who don't get jokers if one player gets both). The combination of lack of information until a joker gets played and the second-highest card winning tricks left me struggling to have much of a plan.
Terracotta Army - 1 play - 5
First Published 2022/pic6949932.jpg)
We got one of my group Terracotta Army for his 40th birthday present, as he likes heavy Euros and this one sounded somewhat interactive.
On the plus side, most of the focus is on building statues of various types to place on the central board, with a lot of the scoring there involving other players. But each statue can score points in at least *eight* different ways, ten or more depending on exactly how you count things. That's just way too much to consider, even if you weren't having to acquire those statues via a triple-wheel action-selection doohickey.
Akropolis - 1 play - 5
First Published 2022/pic6705097.jpg)
Wow, someone managed to come up with a "take & make" game even blander than Cascadia! The gimmick here is that the "make" part is 3-D - the higher the level you put a tile on, the more points it is worth. But the scoring conditions and the "take" part are about as boring as possible. Sure, it's "smooth" - so smooth you barely even notice you've played a game.
Other gaming highlights
Managed to fit in a full 16-hand game of Doppelkopf online - usually we've ended up breaking off part-way through and then never getting back to it!
Reading
I'm a Fan, Sheena Patel
First-person stream-of-consciousness from a thirty-something woman who's on the wrong end of an unequal relationship. It's an acerbic critique of sexual and racial power dynamics and social media obsession. I'm glad I read it but I'm also glad it was quite short.
Babel, RF Kuang
A scathing critique of colonialism via a historical novel (set in the 1830s) with a dash of linguistics-based magic. I found the story engrossing and the message strong but the hectoring footnotes detailing the real events behind the narrative felt unnecessary. The lectures on translation (as received by the main characters studying at Oxford) were really interesting though!
The Lola Quartet, Emily St John Mandel
I've now read all six of her books. There's no doubt that the later ones are better, but I enjoyed her trio of noir-ish early novels too. This one sees the eponymous high-school jazz group crossing paths 10 years later, drawn together by a mystery and a crime.
The Fell, Sarah Moss
An evocative novella set amidst the most dispiriting period of the pandemic - November 2020 as cases shot up and lockdown returned, with no end (or vaccine) yet in sight. We're taken inside the minds of four characters as a woman goes missing in the moors.
Listening
Really liked James Yorkston, Nina Persson and the Second Hand Orchestra's The Great White Sea Eagle and the Rozi Plain and Meg Baird albums were nice too. And I found the poptastic new Belle & Sebastian single irresistible.
A good month for live (and live-ish) music too. Eccentric singer-songwriter/mechanical instrument builder Thomas Truax in Cardiff and the euphoric 20-ish-years-on reunion of The Delgados in London, plus the new ABBA 'hologram' concert which far exceeded my expectations. An incredible feat of technology, not just the '3-D' recreation of the band on stage but also the pin-sharp big screens, surround sound and lighting. A live band augments the original vocal tracks and the purpose-built arena is surprisingly spacious and less tacky and corporate than I'd imagined.
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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I already posted my best new-to-me games. Here's the books and albums, which I was writing up elsewhere anyway.
Books - top ten of the fifty novels I read this year
Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land: interwoven narrative spanning Ancient Greece, medieval Constantinople, 20th century America and the far future, each strand was equally gripping.
Nicola Barker, I Am Sovereign: for laughs-out-loud per page this postmodern novella was an absolute winner. It also inspired me to read seven more novels by her! Five more to go.
Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch: set in a decaying rust belt town, it follows the lives of the residents of the titular apartment block. It's satirical but heartfelt and reminded me of David Foster Wallace at times.
David Annand, Peterdown: this felt like it was written for me and my family, hilariously depicting football and local politics in a town that felt a lot like Huddersfield.
Moses McKenzie, An Olive Grove in Ends: and this one is set along Stapleton Road, minutes away from where we live in Bristol (though we're part of the gentrification he sometimes rails against!)
Jonathan Coe, Bournville: tender multi-generational family saga set around a series of key moments in the recent history of the UK. Felt very appropriate that it came out just as the Queen died.
Emily St John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility: after loving Station Eleven I read several of her other books this year and I could have picked the Glass Hotel too, but this one nicely ties all three of those books together in a time-travel yarn.
David Keenan, Industry of Magic & Light: follow-up/prequel to his amazing This is Memorial Device, it's a hallucinatory evocation of the 60s music scene in a small Scottish town.
Nathan Hill, The Nix: a chunky "great American novel" taking in the 1968 Democratic convention, the Iraq War, MMORPGs and more.
Claire Thomas, The Performance: three women from different generations watch a Beckett play and think about stuff. More engrossing than that sounds!
Only read a couple of non-fiction but I'd certainly recommend C Thi Nguyen's Games: Agency as Art
Albums
I did a 10-track Spotify mix taken from my favourite albums released this year: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/76mWY8SbaO2ZWkaDPzKIza?si=...
Tracklist:
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Breast of Glass
Nina Nastasia - Blind as Batsies
Big Thief - Little Things
Kevin Morby - This is a Photograph
Modern Nature - Masque
Meridian Brothers - Metamorfosis
Panda Bear/Sonic Boom - Whirlpool
Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Who Loved the Rain
Built to Spill - Spiderweb
The Burning Hell - The End of the End of the World
Missing is Oren Ambarchi's Shebang - at 4 tracks averaging 10 minutes each and which make one continuous suite, it didn't really fit on a mixtape.
Live highlight has to be Low in April, can't believe I'll never see them again
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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New-to-me games
7 Spots x7 NEW!
Just one this month and it's a cute and fun dice game from Jon Perry, the designer of the excellent Air Land & Sea. Try to roll the right numbers to fill up your dalmatian cards before you go bust, aided by a selection of modular special powers that are drafted worker-placement-style.
Other gaming highlights
I brought Hit, Strike and Art Robbery to play with my nephews before Christmas and they all went down well, with only one serious tantrum
Reading
Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky
A sci-fi epic which alternates between the perspective of a post-apocalypse generation ship and a terraformed planet of intelligent spiders. Both are rendered really well and it's hard not to root for the spiders!
H(A)PPY, Nicola Barker
Got this one in hard copy rather than ebook as it has imaginatively designed typography with coloured words and more. I enjoyed it but it's pretty out there even for Barker.
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
Sometimes I get the feeling that when literary authors get great reviews for sci-fi books, it's because the reviewers don't really read any sci-fi. This fable of 'artificial friends' wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything I haven't read before either.
God Bless Your Mr Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut
This satire wasn't the best Vonnegut I've read but as always had some memorable turns of phrase, and the critique of capitalism hasn't got any less valid.
Listening
Spent some time with my favourites from the year - I need to get a playlist together. Interesting new (to me) stuff from Black Ox Orkestar, Gaye su Akyol and Lucrecia Dalt.
No gigs in December, but I have the reformed Delgados next month as well as the ABBA hologram show!
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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Total plays: 216
Distinct games: 70
New-to-me games: 16
Dimes: 3 - Strike (32), No Mercy (26), Sea Salt & Paper (14)
Nickels: 7 - San Francisco (8), Spots (7), So Clover! (7), Cross Clues (7), Just One (6), 6 nimmt! (5), Schnipp & Weg (5)
A fantastic weekend away with my games group saw lots of old favourites get played. There was a lot of Strike and Hit with my family, and some fun online plays with the OG guild.
Now a look at the collection.
Acquired: 3 - No Mercy, San Francisco, Ready Set Bet
Removed: 0
Owned: 275
Unplayed: 2 - Res Publica, Uruk: Wiege der Zivilisation
Phew, slowed down quite a bit after the summer craziness. The two Knizias got a lot of play.
Best new-to-me: No Mercy (or Hit! in my edition) which may have become my favourite pure push-your-luck game.
10 6 nimmt! x5 (193 all-time)
10 Babylonia x3 (35 all-time)
10 Doppelkopf (22 all-time)
10 For Sale x2 (99 all-time)
10 Ra x2 (78 all-time)
10 So Clover! x7 (57 all-time)
10 The Crew: Mission Deep Sea x2 (17 all-time)
9 American Bookshop x2 (23 all-time)
9 Azul (38 all-time)
9 Cross Clues x6 (57 all-time)
9 Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (23 all-time)
9 Just One x6 (47 all-time)
9 Letterpress x4 (34 all-time)
9 Lords of Vegas (17 all-time)
9 MarraCash (8 all-time)
9 Modern Art (13 all-time)
9 Montage (8 all-time)
9 Ninety-Nine (19 all-time)
9 Polterfass (18 all-time)
9 Res Arcana (44 all-time)
9 Sea Salt & Paper x14 (20 all-time)
9 Strike x32 (63 all-time)
8 Air, Land, & Sea: Spies, Lies, & Supplies x2 NEW!
8 Brian Boru: High King of Ireland x3 (8 all-time)
8 Caesar!: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! x4 (11 all-time)
8 Carcassonne: The Castle (13 all-time)
8 Escape from the Hidden Castle x4 (53 all-time)
8 Faiyum (4 all-time)
8 Marrakech x3 (32 all-time)
8 Mille Fiori x2 (7 all-time)
8 No Mercy x26 NEW!
8 Nokosu Dice (10 all-time)
8 Push It (23 all-time)
8 SCOUT (12 all-time)
8 San Francisco x8 NEW!
8 Schnipp & Weg x5 (15 all-time)
8 Set & Match x3 (8 all-time)
8 Spicy (16 all-time)
8 That's Life! (9 all-time)
8 Was sticht? (5 all-time)
8 Wavelength x2 (18 all-time)
7 Art Robbery x3 (6 all-time)
7 Blue Lagoon (8 all-time)
7 Bring Your Own Book (5 all-time)
7 Collusion (3 all-time)
7 Dandelions x4 NEW!
7 Doodle Dash (3 all-time)
7 Gang of Dice x2 NEW!
7 Hammer Time NEW!
7 Incan Gold x4 (36 all-time)
7 Ingenious (6 all-time)
7 Ingenious: Travel Edition (15 all-time)
7 Into the Blue x2 (9 all-time)
7 LetterTricks x2 (4 all-time)
7 Lost Cities (7 all-time)
7 No Thanks! x3 (82 all-time)
7 Ready Set Bet x2 NEW!
7 Spots x7 NEW!
7 Tiger & Dragon x3 (7 all-time)
7 Trendy (4 all-time)
6 Arboretum (3 all-time)
6 Gift of Tulips NEW!
6 Herd Mentality NEW!
6 Lucha Wars NEW!
6 Oltre Mare NEW!
6 That Time You Killed Me NEW!
6 Tricky Mixes NEW!
5 First Rat NEW!
5 Ninety-Nine (2 all-time)
4 Next Station: London NEW!
- [+] Dice rolls
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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It's that time of year again! The traditional yin and yang geeklists have been posted so here are my entries. I'll edit if anything particularly notable crops up in the remaining three weeks of the year.
The best
Add yours at 10 best "new to you" games of 2022
1. Strike (44 plays) - there are many ways to rate and compare games but for me none is truer than "did I have a blast playing it with my friends and family?". I wasn't sure I could find the fun from a read of the rules, but within seconds of busting out the "arena" and the dice, there it was.
2. No Mercy (aka Hit!) (17 plays) - and the same story for this Knizia pure push-your-luck, a streamlining of his earlier Cheeky Monkey and Family Inc into a small-box deck of cards. Often the fun in push-your-luck comes from each player taking on fate individually and cheering for others' failure. This one manages to entwine the players together more with the possibility of stealing, while remaining a 30-second teach, zero-setup, play-anywhere masterpiece.
3. Sea Salt & Paper (19 plays) - I love the echoes of Koi-Koi and Mah-Jong that Cathala and Rivière embedded into this set-collection/push-your-luck card game. It's made by the decision each round of whether to 'cash out' or gamble, and the charming presentation certainly doesn't hurt.
4. Tea for 2 (14 plays) - this could very well be my favourite deck-builder. Replacing selecting which card to play with a simultaneous flip from the deck and War-style comparison is a stroke of brilliance. But there's more to the game than just that central mechanism - having variable scoring conditions triggered by which buy-piles are exhausted by the players is really clever too.
5. Schnipp & Weg (11 plays) / Set & Match (6 plays) - two games that involve two players taking turns flicking discs back and forth across a board, but they have such different feels. Schnipp & Weg is a gladiatorial fight to the death, with the constant feeling that each mistake you make could be fatal. Set & Match superbly evokes a tennis rally, putting pressure on your opponent until you force them into a mistake.
6. Caesar!: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (9 plays) - well if this isn't OG (old-school German-style), I don't know what is. It only really shares the token-drawing with Mori's earlier Blitzkrieg, and I much prefer the head-to-head area control battle in this one. Giving a bonus power token to the player who completes an area even if they don't win it is what makes the game come alive.
7. Overstocked (8 plays) - took a punt on this one as I liked the designer's first game Glasgow, and this is even better. It's a spatial stock-market game in which players either patch cards into their own area to build up their collections or into a central area to manipulate the values of the items that are being collected. There's a lot here for just 6 turns per player.
8. Mille Fiori (7 plays) - looked like Knizia might have gone over to the point-salad dark side from a read of the rules but I shouldn't have doubted in. This is straightforward, interactive and the cascading points are just plain fun.
9. San Francisco (5 plays) - and here he is taking on the ubiquitous 'take & make' too. The Coloretto-like drafting is much more subtle than the usual 'take what you need because it's too costly to hate-draft' and almost everything is scored in relation to other players (first-to-finish, area majority) rather than by tinkering with your own puzzle.
10. Wandering Towers (7 plays) - Knizia's not the only old master with life in him. Kramer & Kiesling deliver a great take on Pachisi that's been fun with the family and at games night. The stackable towers look amazing on the table and allow for a light memory element which has been really funny for us too.
Honourable mentions for: Into the Blue, Sheepy Time, Jekyll vs. Hyde, Gambler × Gamble!, Rumble Nation, Doodle Dash, Collusion, Ready Set Bet, Air, Land, & Sea: Spies, Lies, & Supplies and Keltis: Neue Wege, Neue Ziele.
The worst
Add yours at 10 Worst "new to you" games of 2022
While Ready Set Bet perfectly captured the excitement of placing bets trackside as the horses fly past, Long Shot: The Dice Game felt more like being put in the same environment and then forced to complete your tax return. I didn't find racing/betting combined at all well with an individual board roll & write with a bingo-style mini-game. With 7 players it was an awful drag due to the turns which can't quite be done simultaneously because sometimes you really need to know what the players before you are doing. Worst of all, when it looked like it was nearly over, it degenerated into everyone making the horses run backwards just before they could cross the finish line!
Poor Chris Handy made it on to my list again with FLY, a 'dexterity' game involving dropping tiny cards which manages to be about 5% of the size of the similar FlowerFall but also 5% of the fun.
Lost Kingdoms: Pangea in Pieces looked potentially OG-friendly with tile-laying in a central area and area-majority scoring, but sadly it doesn't seem very well designed. Lots of analysis paralysis which doesn't ultimately end up mattering because the board changes so much between turns. The most important thing is whether one of the three scoring rounds gets randomly triggered just after one of your turns rather than just after someone else's.
Next Station: London is yet another generic no-interaction roll/flip & write. Barely even worth getting annoyed about. And in the same box, file Balloon Pop! which I played on BGA and can barely remember.
Cascadia was at least fun to analyse as a prototypical modern game. While I can understand the appeal, it certainly isn't for me.
Rosenberg apparently keeps iterating on the idea of Framework but it didn't seem at all compelling to me. Same complaint as with Cascadia: I find tile-laying so much more interesting when the players build something together.
First Rat *does* have a shared-board OG core, with a clever movement mechanism along a track and payments to other players for landing on a space they occupy. But *man* does it bury it under layers of subsystems, tracks and about five different kinds of engine-building power-ups. And yeah, we did different things and all ended up with about 90 VP +/- 5. I didn't hate it but I'd have liked it a heck of a lot more if they'd just focussed on the good parts.
Fjords (2005) is a decent game, but Fjords (2022) thoughtlessly expands it to 4 players, which was a total drag, even more so with the new tile-drafting rule.
And just to show I'm not biased, I'll throw in an underwhelming Knizia, Sumatra. Wretched graphic design and it feels like Ra scoring but more complicated, while the drafting is a lot less interesting than the auction in Ra. A rare Knizia that didn't leave me keen to try it again immediately.
- [+] Dice rolls
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
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New-to-me games
8 San Francisco x4 NEW!
This new Knizia is essentially a 'take & make' drafting game, with an interesting 'take' part that I haven't seen before. Like Coloretto, you either flip a card and add it to a row or take all the cards in a row. But each time you take a row you also have to take a contract token, and you can only take rows that have more cards in them than you have contracts. So the more times you take, the longer you have to wait before you can take again.
The 'make' part is pretty interactive too as there are points for being first to finish areas and for (six different) area majorities. There's also a bit of personal network-building and some special power bonuses, so it's a pretty modern-feeling design for a Knizia.
It's also one of those games that has a fixed pot of points which gets divided up between the players, and not very many of them at that. In the first game I managed 4 (four), and other games were won by a half-point difference. Most of the points are gained through direct comparison with other players so you're going to be watching the other players' boards a lot.
There aren't many decisions to make on your personal board. You have five coloured rows, and you have to place cards in the matching one, filling from left to right. So the only time you have a choice about what to do with the cards you've taken is when you have multiple cards of the same colour or a wild card. This means the focus is very much on the central 'take' area.
The game ends when a certain number of 'foundation' cards have been flipped. There are 10 in the deck, and it takes 6 to end a 2p game, 8 for 3p and all 10 for 4p. There is no initial deck-seeding, so this could vary wildly. Our first game was really short, which caught us all a bit by surprise while the second went about as long as it could, with the endgame featuring lots of colours that were 'dead' for one or two players, because they'd already filled that row.
So far, 3p seems better than 4, and I'm interested to try it with 2.
7 Gang of Dice x2 NEW!
And yet another new Knizia, this one a push-your-luck dice game on BGA which isn't a rehash of any of his previous ones. Good fun -- I may homebrew a copy as it's not available at the moment.
7 Ready Set Bet x2 NEW!
This is LOUD (so loud we got told off by Joe's wife). It's a real-time race-track betting game which can have up to 8 players betting plus another one rolling the dice to run the race (or you can use an app). There are a bunch of special bets as well as standard win, place or show, and at a certain point no further bets are allowed and everyone just watches the race play out while yelling encouragement. We won't play it every week but it's unlike anything else in my collection which is great.
6 Oltre Mare NEW!
Not bad - it's kind of like Bohnanza had a baby with a trading-in-the-Med game. I like how you get a small reward every time you trade with the active player. I didn't really figure out the game's economy at all though and ground to a halt in the second half. Possibly a bit too long and a bit too dry, but I'd play it again.
6 Tricky Mixes NEW!
One of DJ's many recent designs, it's a rather baroque trick-taker with rotating trumps, reversing ranks, area majorities and a connection board. I had a good time but may-follow is not my favourite form of trick-taking.
6 Gift of Tulips NEW!
Some nice ideas in this minimalist market manipulation game, but it felt like it all descended into chaos in the end.
Other gaming highlights
Annual weekend away with my Bristol group - about a dozen of us on a farm in Devon with nothing to do but eat, drink and game. Lots of old favourites got played and just one new-to-me. And in the virtual realm, it was the first con for the OG Guild - lovely to play a few live games with friends made there.
Reading
Bournville, Jonathan Coe
A multi-generational family saga told in vignettes at moments of (British) national significance, it was as warm-hearted and witty as Coe always is.
The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis
I've never seen the film, but based on reading the book, David Bowie was perfectly cast. More psychological than sci-fi as an alien visitor descends into alcoholism and melancholia.
The Singer's Gun, Emily St John Mandel
I've been working my way through her earlier novels after loving everything from Station Eleven on. They're not quite as good, but still beautifully written with memorable settings.
Listening
I spent a lot of time working my way through Low's many brilliant albums after the desperately sad news of Mimi Parker's death early in the month. I've been listening to and watching them for half my life, most recently in April this year, when they were on brilliant form.
Favourite bands are threads that run through your life, stitched each time a new album came out or you saw them live. Pulling on the thread brings back those memories – who you were with, where you lived, what you cared about – and helps connect all those past yous with the current you; the same person despite everything that’s changed. Hearing the news, I felt like a thread I’d expected to bind me together for years to come had suddenly snapped, and it hurt.
A couple of nice gigs: Canadian singer/guitarist Myriam Gendron, and Darren Hayman playing songs from the first two Hefner albums which I liked a lot back in the 90s.
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