Game Night - Heck! It's the Fearsome Time Travelling See-Saw

🕑 8 min read

Zoinks! It's Game Night! For the purposes of this post, all player's names have been changed to protect the pillaged and hen-pecked worms. 

On this eventful Tuesday evening in August, almost 30 NOBOGlins turned up and played on 6 tables! After the usual introductions, several of us broke away and managed to pull out and play 4 medium/light-weight games. Our 1st game was with 3 players; 2nd game with 4; then our final 2 games were with 5 whole NOBOGlin players! Like I said, it was eventful.

Let's GO!!

IT'S ALIVE!!

First up was Fearsome Floors, with Shaggy, Fred and I. Now, this game only usually takes 30-45minutes however we found the slow-lane and finished our session after a gentleman's 90 minutes of play (including a 10 minute intermission - more about that later). Our mission was to escape a dungeon with as many of our party members as we could (beginning with 4 each) before a monster caught up with us. Shaggy was the 'monster standee' builder this game, and what a handsome businessman monster 'Mr Conjunctivitis' was. The race started out pretty standard, an orderly wave of kidnap victims emerged from their cells slightly dazed and confused. Then quickly followed by a forced 'skedaddle' when Mr Conjunctivitis unexpectedly ploughed into Fred's escaping party, ultimately sending 2 victims back to the beginning. Good start. 

3.2.1. SKEDADDLE!!

From then on, Shaggy and I slowly but surely sneaked towards the exit, however, my 'Old Fonzie' stumbled and was captured; back to the start with you old man! Shaggy was now the one to beat. I tried my best to divert the attention of Mr Conjunctivitis towards Shaggy's party members, but the all I could do was claim yet another one of Fred's characters and bring the monster toe to toe with one of Shaggy's escapees. Rats!!

It was at that point we had our intermission. A fire alarm went off and all of us NOBOGlins vacated the bar and onto the street, leaving behind one metric tonne of cardboard and wood to feed a potential fire. Luckily the alarm turned out to be false, thus saving our games from either burning to ash, or becoming water damaged. 

It's Behind You!!

Returning to the game with a renewed vigor, we had to confront the fact that our pal Shaggy was on a cakewalk to victory, but not on my watch! I immediately went into action sacrificing my 'Zombie Fonzie', who went to the big 'garage apartment' in the sky along with one of Fred's party; before lining up yet another 2 kills, my 'Fonzie Fonzie' and at last, one of Shaggy's. I was playing for a draw! Unlucky for me, Fred was having none of it, and saw a way where they could win the whole game by sacrificing their puppy (who exactly IS the monster in this game Fred?). My 'Old Fonzie' bit the dust permanently and the pressure was now on! I was excited because from here on in, the game was Fred's to win or lose. C'mon Fred!!

Fred lost. Shaggy won.

HOORAY!?! All my machinations came to nought. It was at that time Velma joined us, and we went into our 2nd game of the evening with 4 players.

The Viking See-Saw. 

Our winner from the first game, Shaggy, brought along a BEEEEeeutiful stacking dexterity game by the one and only Dr Knizia. This game is very simple. Each player starts with identical piles of cargo, then in turn, places one of their pieces onto the tipped up (high) end of a pink viking boat. Yes, after a busy campaign of dating and pillaging, nothing says gender neutrality better than sailing away on a powder pink boat of peace and love. #NotAllVikings

Japaneses Viking Boat

IF, you manage to place your piece of cargo safely onto the boat, NOT tipping it over, then congratulations - your stolen (sorry, re-distributed) items may actually make it back...to... I wanna say Sweden(?), but it could easily be Norway. Nope wait, apparently these are Japanese vikings, all the way from Japan. That's kinda terrifying actually. 

Next player then tries to balance their loot on the boat too. This continues until a player tips it over and/or unsettles the boat, thus dropping some cargo into the sea. Now they have to pick up a mystery box (brown crate), and/or any items that fell into the drink, adding it back to their pile again. I think you get the idea. First player to stow-away all of their loot (or 'luggage' if you want to gas-light the entire UK - thanks BGG) wins the game.

This game was a lovely and exciting puzzle, especially since the pieces of cargo (luggage - lolz) are a variety of sizes, shapes and weights. Unfortunately I think our new player Velma ended up with more cargo than they started with, obviously due to the choppy waters of the North Sea... and our current champion Shaggy, managed to get another win under their belt. The scores so far: Fred 0, Shaggy 2, Velma 0 and Me 0. Next game please! 

I like being centre of attention

So the next game started and ended pretty fast as it was Timeline, the game made infamous (not a thing) for making some of us look incredibly well read and studious... and others (me), look stupid and ignorant. Our resident cargo kleptomaniac Velma brought in this game, and explained it very well to us all....including our new player Scooby!! Now we were 5. 

The idea of this game was to empty our hand of 4 cards into the timeline in front of us. Each card depicts an event of historical significance, all we had to do is place it in chronological order, without knowing the year shown on the back. As the timeline gets longer, the chances of getting rid of a card becomes tougher. If you fail to guess the right place in the timeline for your card, it gets discarded and you draw a new card into your hand. I enjoyed this game, and it was educational for about 30 seconds (my memory span). Velma won, closely followed by - I wanna say Fred. However in this game, being second is just the first loser, Fred. Look haven't you got an adorable puppy to kerb-stomp somewhere?! I didn't manage to take a photo of our game, however I did an artist's impression of how the game looked and went. Enjoy. NEXT!!

Past game photo

Lastly, but by no means least we played Pickomino (or Heck Meck if you're cool like the Fonz). Another Reiner Knizia classic; this game is a push your luck, dice rolling, take-that extravaganza of groans, hubris and victory dances. I will cover the rules better in a WHADIYOB post at a later date. It's a game not to be dissed or missed. I brought this game in, so was quietly confident that I could get a win in, to save some face...

All you need to know are these rules: 1. Roll some dice (Yahtzee style) but you can roll as many times as you like - or until you bust. 2. Bank only dice of the same number (or worms). 3. When adding up your banked dice and taking a tile, a worm counts as 5 points, and you MUST have at least 1 worm to have a legal total or go bust 4. Collect the numbered 'worm tiles' by rolling the their exact number and create a single 'stack' of them in front of you. 5. Rolling higher numbers is great, as it earns higher value worm tiles and protects your 'stack'. 6. You can steal tiles from other players by rolling the exact number of their uppermost tile on their stack. 7. If at anytime you 'bust', then you lose your uppermost tile to the table again and the highest numbered tile on the table gets flipped.

Shaggy rolls dice fine.

Let's Roll. The game started out pretty well for both Shaggy and I. We immediately captured tiles in the low thirties! Amazing start. Fred, Velma and Scooby were not quite so lucky though, and Shaggy and I proceeded to steal tiles from them, quite profusely I might add. Shaggy finally moved into the lead after a particularly vicious onslaught of Velma's vulnerable stack. Velma impressively kept their cool though. Good on them. 

Eventually, as always, someone flew too close to the Sun and just as Icarus famously did, they had their worms stolen and/or busted. That 'someone' was Shaggy. Their screams were not of anguish at all, they were of course, screams of delight. Delight for an exciting rollercoaster ride of both victimisation and hubris.

The next Icarus in the line of fire was me. Yes, I had slowly been building up my stack, diligently protecting it from foreign hens, coming over here and stealing my worms, blah blah blah...then I lost. I stumbled at one of the last few hurdles of the game, but not only did I lose, I came LAST. I had no worms and was hen-pecked to oblivion... not even dust remained! I think my opponents would have pecked out my soul if the game allowed them to. To be honest, I think they did - they stole a part of me that evening. Especially Fred. 

Against all the odds, our very own Velma won, by a healthy margin. 

The final scores were as follows:

1st (Joint with 2 wins each) - Velma and Shaggy!

Last - The rest of us losers.

Well I had a great night, and I'm pretty sure all the rest of the gang did too. Plus it is worth mentioning that no-one was made fun of or belittled at all. Just in case my jokes fell flat. 

..and they celebrated.  

So there we have it; my preference has usually been for getting several light weight games on to the table and then finish with a filler, but that's not for everyone. Fred remarked that they regularly chased 'gaming nirvana' via the route of heavy, crunchy euro-style games.

"..one game to rule the entire evening!"

However, they did confess that they really enjoyed the bloody, salty, aged and wormy 'palate cleansing sorbets' which were served up this fine evening. Hooray for everyone, we did good!

See you all at NoBoG* another night!

*Please feel free to drop by the Google listing for NoBoG and review it :)