This weekend was the craziest most game filled two days I’ve ever experienced since getting into the hobby.
In the last few months, I’ve played several weekends with the girlfriend now. And a few weeks ago, I managed to get an evening in with the gaming buddies who got me into this hobby two years ago. But this weekend would see both these worlds come together and lead me to play through 19 different games across about 28 hours.
(The girlfriend and I agreed to not count the 4 player games on the Saturday evening as part of our ongoing competition).
DAY ONE
JAIPUR (2009)
Another play through that took us to three rounds. Again, Diamonds were useful enough to help one of us take the win, but we’ve also found that it now sometimes pays to control when the game ends by taking that third pile of tokens away. I don’t think we’ve ended a game on running out the deck yet.
ME: 0
GF: 1
MUFFIN TIME (2020)
MUFFIN TIME hasn’t missed a games session since we first played it. The absolute stupidity and chaos of the cards, added to the fact that I went all in on the Kickstarter and have a large number of cards, means we haven’t seen half of what this game has to offer. Cards keep being played that just have us in stitches.
And once again, when the girlfriend called out “It’s Muffin Time”, I found myself with a hand full of cards that were nothing short of useless. Damn you, hilarious yet useless cards. Damn you.
ME: 0
GF: 2
CAT LADY (2017)
After playing and enjoying KIBBLE SCUFFLE last time out, the girlfriend jumped online and looked for other cat themed games. She has since ordered ISLE OF CATS (to be played at a future game weekend), but also found another one I’ve not heard of; CAT LADY.
It’s a simple game where a 3×3 grid of cards is laid out containing cats, toys, food, and other cat related items. You take turns drafting a row or column of cards into your hand. You need cats for points, you need food to feed cats, or they won’t score. And toys or outfits score by amount or diversity.
It’s the feeding the cats mechanic I like as you can draw more, but if you can’t get them their food, they go hungry and are worth minus points. You’d be forgiven for thinking that a player should just hoard food then, but you get punished a lot in this game with minus points, and over feeding is just another way to be punished.
The other mechanic I like is the Cat meeple used to block. At the end of your turn, you can place the wooden cat token aside a row or column and the other player cannot take that set of cards.
I fell behind early on but managed to ‘claw’ back so that the loss wasn’t as painful as it could have been. Really enjoyed CAT LADY. A perfect little filler game that I look forward to playing again (and I’ve been informed that the expansion has already been ordered and is now in our collection).
ME: 0
GF: 3
PANDEMIC: HOT ZONE – NORTH AMERICA (2020)
I was down by three by late morning and needed a breather. So, after we made the decision that the loser picks the next game, I thought I’d go for something co-op so that the lead would at least remain the same whether we won or lost.
I’ve enjoyed the original PANDEMIC, and still hope to get PANDEMIC LEGACY to the table soon. Before lock-down, a couple of work colleagues asked about PANDEMIC, but I didn’t think I’d have enough time to set it up, explain the rules, play, and pack up in our break time.
Thankfully, Z-Man games have a solution.
The Hot Zone version has a smaller map, one less disease to cure, and plays in half the time. When I get back to my lunch time game sessions, this will be perfect.
Playing this with just the girlfriend was the first time I’d been part of a 2-player PANDEMIC game and it worked very well. As always, that first decease gets cured quick enough that I feel I’m playing the game wrong. But I needn’t have worried; before long the poo poo hit the fan.
This shorter version doesn’t have the option of eradicating a disease, so there is no respite, only the ability to clean up cities fast once you’ve cured (which I forgot for about three turns).
It was a tug of war for a while with the two remaining diseases kicking our butts thanks to ill timed Epidemic cards. I covered the North while the girlfriend covered the South. I then noticed that the draw deck was getting low. If we ran out, that was one of the lose conditions.
And then suddenly everything just clicked into place. I flew to the same city as my girlfriend and used my special ability to hand over a card different to our location. Then we both had the right cards in hand to cure a disease each. We were both three spaces from the CDC giving us both a spare action to cure. She went first. I followed.
And the world was saved. Your welcome.
ME: 1
GF: 4
PARIS: LA CITE DE LA LUMIERE (2019)
Our second time getting this to the table, and I forgot how fantastic is looks when all set up.
This game is so simple to learn and play, but there are a lot of tactics involved with what you decide to do each turn. As I mentioned the last time we played, you can plan as much as you like, but if you don’t include a contingency, all it takes is your opponent to place a building right where it hurts you and you’ll struggle to find a plan B.
Which is what happened to me this time round.
Like the Borg, my girlfriend assimilates from defeat. She saw exactly what I did the last time to score high and win, and she used that as her plan. Me? Well I over thought everything this time round and paid the price.
As we counted up the scores, my strategically placed artist wasn’t enough, and as she sat there admiring her well-lit buildings all connected on one side of the board, I took the hit of another defeat.
ME: 1
GF: 5
TATSU (2016)
We’ve played TATSU a few times now and I normally get destroyed in about 10 minutes. But this game was different. This one lasted a while longer and neither of us had a clear lead for quite a way in.
And then the God of Dice bestowed favour towards me, and I was able to move my dragons with lethal precision.
One by one the girlfriend looked on helplessly as her dragons fell to my attacks, and I was left victorious. Mwah ha ha.
ME: 2
GF: 5
MEMOIR ‘44 (2004)
Wanted to get this for a long time, but knew it was a waste of money without that dedicated player 2. When I tentatively mentioned it to the girlfriend, she surprised me with a yes. That evening the game was ordered and since its arrival a few months back, it’s been waiting for its turn at the table.
Pretty much a game of chess, but with a prettier board, and a card drafting mechanic that controls the available moves. I was deemed unworthy and given the Nazi’s, while the girlfriend readied her mighty Allied troops.
I say one thing, even though we started with the Pegasus Bridge mission, a sort of basic training level where only infantry and a handful of terrain types are used, set up was still a little frustrating. Finding the corresponding terrain tiles to the map, when said tiles are double sided and aren’t always exactly what is depicted in the mission booklet, made it feel like a puzzle crossed with a memory game before we’d even got to the good stuff.
That said, once that faff was out the way, I really enjoyed the game itself. It’s quite simple really, though as I said, we only had infantry to begin. But choose one of your Order Cards to play, point out which troops you’ll play that turn, and then move/attack. Easy.
I even enjoyed that the confusion for the German troops who suddenly found themselves under surprise attack that night was simulated by me having a very limited hand size. While it grew a little, it never matched my girlfriend’s 6 card hand limit. She had the advantage from the off.
But despite that, she made a single flaw and didn’t take one of the bridges at a crucial point of the battle. This left victory wide open for me as I had to kill a loan Allied figure to get my fourth medal.
I feel like that kind of military blunder won’t happen again. We may have changed the outcome of history this time round, but I feel the girlfriend will switch her tactical prowess to eleven next time we play.
ME: 3
GF: 5
HANAMIKOJI (2013)
I’m good at this game, even though a lot of the time I don’t have a plan until the last turn. I felt confident that after two victories in a row, I counted on keeping the flow going as we prepped the cards.
Oh, how wrong I was. After the last match we played ended with a tie that went to me, somehow roles were reversed, and we ended up with another tie that this time favoured the girlfriend.
I sometimes get caught out on this game because I find myself left with a turn token that doesn’t allow me to place a card at all (token number 2) so all I can do is pick up a card from the draw pile and lay it down with the one left in my hand, whether it’s a card I need or not. But on the flipside, you can’t use that move too early as you don’t know what you may or may not need.
Tricky game, HANAMIKOJI, but I really like it.
ME: 3
GF: 6
MAG-BLAST (2002)
Well, I think we all know how this one went down. Shall we move on? No? Fine.
Girlfriend showed me how it’s done once again with years of experience and an evil streak that saw her pick off my ships and then destroy my Flagship in a powerful strike.
She almost looked bored. Almost.
ME: 3
GF: 7
. . . off to the friends house.
SUSHI ROLL (2019)
My first four player game in a long time was a blast to play.
I’ve played a fair amount of SUSHI ROLL with the girlfriend before, and my two mates have shown me no mercy with SUSHI GO! So, it was an easy one to get going as we all had experience with the series.
It got a little more tactical this time, as with four players, Puddings are a little less important. Sure, it’s nice to get the most and score 6 points, but as long as you’re not in last place with them, you can avoid -6 points at the end of the game. So, when I saw that I wasn’t going to win the Pudding race, I backed off and concentrated on other foods, only taking a pudding if I felt I was at risk of bringing up the rear.
Alas, all my planning was for nought, as I forgot that the girlfriend is a SUSHI ROLL master and remains undefeated.
DEAD OF WINTER (2014)
This is my favourite game of all time. I’ve only ever played with these two friends before, and as I mentioned in my review, half the fun comes from the history we have. I’ve been wanting to include the girlfriend for a long time and had already requested that whatever else we played on this visit, DEAD OF WINTER had to be on that list. The game did not disappoint.
My friends and I set the game up while the girlfriend sat in awe of the components spread out before her. We bombarded her with the rules and mechanics of the game and then set out the turns so that she would be last in round one and have seen the general play.
We’ve never had a traitor in any of our games to date. When the girlfriend asked how we know if we’ve picked a traitor card, my friend pointed out that it’s very obvious on the card itself. I took note of this and figured out that she wasn’t the traitor. Knowing I also wasn’t, that just left my two friends to keep an eye on. At least I knew I had an ally I could trust in my girlfriend. And so the game went.
My friends pleaded me to go to the library because I never make it there alive and they find it hilarious. I did send a survivor there at one point but only because I wanted her to die . . . and of course she survived the journey. Damn it.
I made an error with healing myself in the first round because I’d got frost bite, forgetting that the crisis was for medicine. Cries of “Traitor!” rang out across the table, and it looked like I might actually get exiled. But I talked them down eventually and had a lot to build back the trust.
It seemed that the girlfriend struggled a little at the beginning (I remember being overwhelmed myself the first game I played) and she was searching so much that she was constantly attracting zombies to different locations with her noise. So much so that two survivors died thanks to her rummaging. But we all got into our rhythm and ploughed through turn after turn, crisis after crisis.
Then things started to get worse, and although we’ve been close to losing in the past, this time it felt like we had no way out. A round before the end we rolled to place zombies and got overrun. We were despondent. It really hit us as we’ve never lost. It felt rough.
We started packing up and revealed what our goals had been. I only had to have four barricades at the colony by the end of the game, which to be fair I started to forget about as the struggle got harder and harder. My two friends revealed their missions and that they both weren’t the Traitor. So, another game without one of us trying to ruin the colony and burn everything down. How did we keep beating the odds and all fighting for the side of good? Would we ever have a traitor game of DEAD OF WINTER?
And then the girlfriend started laughing. We all turned to her and she flipped her card for all to see. It had all been a ruse. Despite it being her first game, she wasn’t searching over and over because she didn’t get how bad that could be. She knew exactly what she was doing. And if she’d just had one more medicine in her hand and one more junk, she’d have outright won. Of course, next time we play, she will have to work very hard to regain the trust of the colony.
If we ever get invited back round again.
CODENAMES (2015)
I played this as a six last September when I visited my FLGS for my birthday. I really enjoyed it and despite losing, had a fun time as stupid moments had us all laughing so much. I mean yeah, I get why you would pick ‘Shark’ when the clue was ‘Water’. But I hadn’t seen that specific card on the far side of the table, so oops.
Anyway, it was the girlfriend and me, versus my two friends. Couple versus couple. A simple game of seeing which words on the 5×5 grid laid out on the table belong to your spies (Red or Blue). If a player guesses an innocent bystander then their turn ends, and play goes to the other team. If the Assassin is accidentally picked, that team automatically loses.
We played two rounds, the girlfriend and I winning both. We got lucky with having some words that could be grouped well, a fair number of 3 words per clue. Though I did almost let us down at the end when a comic references came up and I, the biggest comic book geek in the group, wasn’t getting it. But after a few minutes (we didn’t use the egg timer), I caught up with everyone else in the room.
A fun party game. Works okay with four, but more enjoyable with larger player counts as the conferring between team mates brings many more laughs, especially when not everyone agrees.
GHOST FIGHTIN’ TREASURE HUNTERS (2013)
I’ve played this once before and found out that the kid friendly art style hides an evil and difficult game. When we set it up and the girlfriend said, “this looks cute”, we all froze and looked at her as if her words had just cursed us all.
A PANDEMIC like game with four kids trying to retrieve treasure from a haunted house, GHOST FIGHTIN TREAURE HUNTERS has ghosts spawning instead of diseases, and dice movement instead of action points.
I let the team down in the early stages with bad rolls that had me moving at a snail’s pace. I think everyone had their first gem out the door before I even reached one. I turned instead to ghost killing(!) and tried to keep the ghosts from becoming Haunts. I pretty much failed at that too.
Despite an early rush on treasure, we barely got out of the house at the end as Haunts came thick and fast and nearly swamped the board. Again, this game is evil.
MUFFIN TIME (2020)
I’ve enjoyed a good few games of MUFFIN TIME now, but the girlfriend and I saw the potential fun that would be bestowed on a higher play count game. So, we didn’t hesitate to get this Kickstarter to the table on this four player games night. And we were rewarded.
I’ve never cared less about winning, instead desperately trying to mould the conditions so that I could play my silliest cards.
The girlfriend once again played the ‘Restart the game’ card almost 15 minutes in. We all groaned, reshuffled, redealt, and got stuck back in. I watched my mate order takeaway on his phone and played the ‘Using the internet’ Trap Card with a grin on my face.
We all cried Muffin Time! at least a couple of times each, but once again it was the girlfriend who walked away victorious. Someone else’s Action Card put her into the win condition, and she was the next player, so no one could stop her. She is invincible.
MYSTERIUM (2015)
Our fourth co-op game of the weekend (and third of the night) saw us gathering at the scene of a murder with the hope of discovering the identity of the killer. It took a little while to get my head around the game but once I picked it up, I really enjoyed it.
One player is the ghost, recently shuffled off this mortal coil and unable to speak. Instead he, or in this case she, must use abstract picture cards to convey the identity of the murderer, the weapon, and the location.
And I say abstract because these things belong on walls as paintings and contain so much information and colour that it is extremely hard to pinpoint the thoughts of the ghost player. The rest of us were left constantly over-thinking things when it could just be that the colour red is in one picture and of the five weapons to choose from, one of the has a red dot on it. Or one player could see a location with a gravestone and say that the possible red clue links to that instead because red rhymes with dead and dead means grave.
Seriously, its hilarious fun as players on the same team argue (and I use that word loosely) because each mind sees things completely differently. And I found that instead of making the game frustrating (though the ghost sure rolled their eyes several times as we moved far away from the ideas she intended), it’s quite fun when its revealed and suddenly makes a lot more sense.
At the end of the game it came to a vote. My girlfriend and mate went one way, I went another. Majority wins and . . . we lost. More so, I had been right. Maybe I could have argued my case more, but even I didn’t really know exactly why. Was more of a gut feeling.
Great game though, and I did not envy the role of the ghost.
TOKAIDO (2012)
This relaxing and beautiful to look at game, TOKAIDO is number 3 on my all time top 10 list.
My two friends we were playing with tonight introduced me to it in the early days of discovering the hobby. I was surprised that it took me over a year to grab my own copy (still unplayed), but I’m glad to have it in my collection.
TOKAIDO is all about having the best trip as you travel from Kyoto to Edo along the southern coast of Honshu, Japan. Along the way you can choose to stop off at any location along the route. These can be shrines, shops, farms, or hot springs. You can also stop off at one of three panoramas to paint the view, or bump into other travellers who bestow gifts and bonuses.There are four inns along the way, breaking the journey up and allowing other players to catch up before you all set off again the next day.
The movement mechanic is simple; the player furthest back from the destination goes next, meaning that if a player rushes too far ahead, they might be waiting a while for the others to have several turns. This mechanic is the same as in the game PARKS, another beautiful and relaxing game.
It’s such a relaxing game. I’ve come last every single time I’ve played it but just enjoy seeing it all on the table. The art is beautiful. I found it a perfect game to end a night on. And we did.
DAY TWO
RABBIT RUMMAGE (2020)
The Sunday morning saw us get straight back to our competition. I was four wins behind and needed to pull out a miracle comeback like the previous weekend.
Next up was a Kickstarter I’d recently received (three months ahead of schedule). It’s a simple game of collecting fruit with rabbits. It was created by a UK games designer and was extremely well priced.
In RABBIT RUMMAGE you roll a D6 and then move your Rabbit meeple that many spaces to pick up fruit. Sounds extremely basic, but the tension comes from the fruit scores at the end. While some have straight points, others like bananas or peppers have scoring criteria that must be met. It becomes a mad rush for certain fruits before the other players block you.
It moves at a pretty speedy pace with just two players, the die barely settling before a player moves their piece and the other player hastily rolls for their turn.
Once we figured out the most beneficial fruit to get in the first match, it came down to the rolls, and I lost the next two matches for the girlfriend to take best of three. In both the matches I lost, I kept getting stuck a little far from any available pieces and only getting to move one or two spaces at a time. Those stuck-in-the-mud moments meant I went three or four turns without scoring, so even though I dominated in bananas, I was too far behind.
It’s a fun little five-minute game that, thanks to a cloth board and small tokens and meeples, makes a great travel game.
ME: 3
GF: 8
COSMIC ENCOUNTER DUEL (2020)
COSMIC ENCOUNTER DUEL is the first game that my girlfriend bought for me and I’ve wanted to get it to the table for a while now. The delay was caused by the complexity of the rules, and I’ve never played the original COSMIC ENCOUNTER. We were starting from scratch.
And it started off exactly as I feared. Constant looking at rules as things weren’t making sense. I was close to giving up a couple of times as I didn’t want to waste gaming time with the girlfriend with my head stuck in a rule book and a stressed look on my face while she was Googling rules to assist.
But about 30 minutes in, things started to click, and suddenly we were duelling back and forward. It’s a lot simpler once you get the turn order down and figure out how everything relates to everything else. The Encounter deck gives you a randomised path through the game, and its just a complicated version of Paper/Rock/Scissor as you chose the size of your attacking force, chose to attack or defend, then chose and apply modifiers.
The race cards each have specific abilities that, once understood, really shake the game up. I was constantly questioning the girlfriend on how she was getting away with stuff only for her to hold up her card and show me her special rules. This is something I struggle with when I’m first learning a game; asymmetrical player abilities are at the back of my mind while I’m trying to keep the gameplay basics going.
Once I got to grips with COSMIC ENCOUNTER DUEL I started to fight back. We’d been playing for about an hour when it came down to our ninth planet. It was 4-4. This was the decider. Control 5 planets and win. I went all in on a massive gamble that would have been a glorious victory . . . but the girlfriend countered my move and wiped me out before I even got to play my initiative.
I had been anxious about playing this at first, nearly put off part way through as well. But at the end, I really wanted to go again. Think it will get played quite often now.
ME: 3
GF: 9
EXPLODING KITTENS NSFW (2015)
We ended the weekend on a cat double bill. First up? EXPLODING KITTENS.
I love this game and it was the first regular game I played before I got into the hobby proper. I played with another group and this was always the one that players wanted to end the nights on. And it always got bloody. How we remained friends, I’ll never know.
I’d never played 2-player before and was worried it might not run as well at the lowest player count, but it was pretty good.
It started well for me as I picked up a second Defuse Card early on, but the girlfriend claimed both in quick succession and then it came down to me using or not using a Shuffle Card. I did not use it and went on to get blown up with no defence.
I looked up at the girlfriend and she just grinned. If I had a lead like she did, I’d grin like that too.
ME: 3
GF: 10
KIBBLE SCUFFLE (2019)
One more cat game and we were done. We’d learnt KIBBLE SCUFFLE last time so was quick to set up and get going. I’m still struggling with how the first player works in a 2-player game as you effectively have two turns in a row; one as the second turn, and then straight back in as the first turn of the next round.
I managed it, and despite lagging behind for most of the game, I made a tactical comeback late on and just stole the victory.
Fun game. Cute art. And really starting to get to grips with the cat powers and chaining moves together.
ME: 4
GF: 10
THE END
Wow, what a weekend. After I just scrapped a victory in the previous weekend, the girlfriend opened both barrels and got her revenge this time. She went on a winning spree and my few victories came from either learning new games, co-op, or pure miracles. She has closed the gap back up now so that I only have a one game lead.
We have a short weekend of gaming coming up before our epic three-day trip away. Still all to play for as we enter the last third of 2020.
Always Play Blue 