Excused Games

Saturday 3rd March was the day of Pasteboard and Plastic XVII, the Saltdean games day in aid of the local Scouts, but as mentioned before I was not feeling completely well and, particularly when I saw the torrential rain outside, I decided to postpone or perhaps cancel my plans to attend. I didn't feel dreadful but someone rightly pointed out that if I didn't feel like playing games then I definitely wasn't well...

Happily Crabro, who organised the event as always, let me feel a little bit included by calling me to ask me which of the games on the second-hand table he could spend my money on. Although tempted by Baltimore and Ohio and others, the most likely to get plays with my friends seemed to be Niagara, so I asked him to kindly buy that on my behalf. It came with an expansion and another mini-expansion so I was well pleased.

More details of this popular local event can be gleaned from this "meta-list" of Boardgamegeek "geeklists" and elsewhere in this diary.

Dragons and More Dragons

Thursday games had a high dragon content. Unfortunately mrwendell and Petra Pan found themelves unable to make it at the last minute but the remaining four of us got stuck into Stefan again. Feld that is and I once again failed to do very well at his fiendishly cunning In The Year of the Dragon but had a great time trying.

Once again very satisfying and I hope we'll stick with Stefan's designs for a while on Tuesdays too.

Once you understand the flow of the game ITYOD seems to move fast and even with this being a learning (or re-learning in some cases) game we still finished in time to try another of Crabro's new games.








This time the dragons in question were hoarding gold and gems and the way to get them was by sending a numbered character from your set of four cards to join in the battle against one of them. Two of the cards represented slightly more complex characters - a wizard and a thief, which enabled the use of cards representing magic artifacts and stealing from an opponent respectively.

The key mechanism of this game though was the timed (one minute) negotiation period during which the players who had slain the dragon had to agree on how to divvy up the spoils...or lose them.

I came joint last, I think because a) I spent too much effort in trying to get an example of each different (wooden!) gem which in the end only results in a five point bonus, and b) being too easily fobbed off in the negotiations. As a dragon-slayer I could do with more assertiveness. Good fun anyway and I wasn't last...only joint last. This was a very nicely presented game, coming as it does in an attractive embossed tin.

I was much more with it this week and thoroughly enjoyed the whole evening.

Year of the Disappointing Beaver?

This week's Tuesday games were "In the Year of the Dragon" and "Niagara" both of which were from the second-hand table at the previous Saturday's game day.

We first set out the very attractive "pick-up-and-deliver" game Niagara, in which one collects gems placing them in small wooden canoes and attempts to return them up-river to safety. The movement is by sets of cards but the game has an interesting mechanism to simulate the flow of the river, which can result in the canoes (and contents) vanishing over the falls. The game board has been cunningly designed to lay across the two halves of the box in order to create an actual drop.

After an initial try which, if nothing else, taught me the value of getting both canoes in the river as soon as possible (i.e. Crabro won fairly easily) we played again, this time adding in the mini-expansion "Diamond Joe" and the more complex "The Spirits of Niagara" expansion this time I think I actually won, though no-one was more surprised than me to discover that as I seemed to spend a substantial part of the game just trying to survive rather than gaining gems.

 The Diamond Joe expansion, although made more attractive by coming in a little draw-string bag, is basically just a neutral coloured canoe which moves up and down the river and offers trading possibilities and another potential source of a gem.

The Spirits expansion offers several variations. It includes double canoes, three extra cards per player (a 7, a 1/2/3 choice card and a lasso which enables a canoe to temporarily leave the river) a cardboard set of Elk antlers which can add movement points the player controlling them and a little wooden beaver. There are also enough cards and canoes to add a sixth player. 

The beaver proved to be rather disappointing. Despite being a nice little miniature, all it does is add the possibility of resetting the weather once in a while (in fact it didn't happen at all in our game). I was rather hoping that it would do something much more interesting: like gnaw a hole in the bottom of a canoe for example.

The final part of the expansions consists of a sticker, representing a whirlpool, which sticks on one of the transparent discs which allow for the river movement. The whirlpool is an obstacle to player canoes and Joe, requiring extra movement allowance to pass and spitting one out downstream if landed on.

Our second game was another by Stefan Feld, designer of Notre Dame and Macao both of which we like. In the Year of the Dragon proved to be exactly as we had heard it described: Much simpler to play than it at first looked from the rules but much more difficult to play well. The reason is that it is beautifully balanced and always gives you several options. You feel there are several things you would like to do but you can only do one. Will you make the right choice? ...Well no, not if you're me anyway. You need to go for VPs but at the same time you need to make sure your palaces and men are protected from the coming events (famine, contagion etc)

It's one of those games that I really enjoy even though I'm not winning and one I can imagine always being happy to play. I can't remember the scores (probably a mercy) but I do remember I had a lot of fun playing both these games.

A really good Tuesday games day in my book.

My Goodreads Review of "Snowdrops"

Snowdrops by A.D. Miller
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD. Another of my pile of Booker short-list novels and the one, so far, that I have enjoyed least. To be fair this isn't really anything to do with the quality of the writing but more to do with the timing and the subject matter. I'm happy to believe that anything that made it to the short-list is an example of good writing but in this case transporting me to a freezing, grey Moscow was not what I needed right now. Russia is a country with a remarkable history and a wonderful cultural legacy but everything I read about it these days paints a picture of an irredeemably corrupt and greedy society dominated by organised crime. This would not in itself be a bad background to the tale but unfortunately the English protagonist also seems to have a rather dysfunctional moral compass, or at least one that he can choose to ignore when it suits. Not being able to identify with any character has always been a problem for me.

Since I clearly have problems with it, perhaps I should explain the three stars (which apparently equate to "I liked it"). Firstly, the writer has spent enough time in Moscow that he clearly has the authority to paint an accurate picture of the city and its way of life, and it feels completely authentic. Secondly I find that the people live on in my mind quite vividly which is a tribute to the author's characterisation. My final problem with it though was in the narrative voice. The central conceit is that the work is in the nature of a confessional as the narrator seeks absolution for his dirty Moscow past as he embarks on a new phase of his life three months before the "big day". Clearly the recipient lady should run, run fast and leave no forwarding address. Meanwhile our hero belongs back in the corpse-filled grimy slush of the purgatory that is apparently modern Moscow. What I would have liked though is that our narrator didn't keep signalling what was coming in advance, although it seems as though it was the author's deliberate choice, perhaps to make this 1st person narrative more realistic by not artificially withholding the knowledge of how the plot unfolds, even though the character was taken in (fairly willingly) himself. Thus we get forewarning that it is the last or next-to-last time we will meet a character etc. All-in-all a fascinating and well drawn picture of Moscow and modern Russian life but not really what I wanted to be reading in a chilly, grey February, and definitely not calculated to have me ringing Aeroflot to book my flight...

View all my reviews

Best Exotic Muppet Safe House

Possible Spoilers Ahead. 

Image via Wikipedia

I headed into Brighton yesterday to catch up with my cinema-going, having got rather into the habit of hibernation through the recent colder weather. Typically for me, the mild spring-like day with its bright sunshine saw me exchanging one indoors for an even darker one and I saw three films in succession: Only emerging, blinking into the sunlight for twenty minutes to stoke up with some healthy junk food before heading back into the darkness.

The films turned out to be a pleasant triple-bill albeit one pretty much devoid of surprises: The first two, Safe House and The Muppets, being shamelessly recycled plots so that any "twists" were seen coming from miles off.

Safe House was a well-made thriller with a good cast including favourites actors of mine: Brendan Gleason and Denzel Washington. Our hero, an untested but apparently gifted and idealistic young CIA agent, played by Ryan Reynolds.

Denzel Washington (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

There was a good feeling of jeopardy and plenty of action although, as previously mentioned, no real surprises in the plot. The action was competently shot but inevitably in these post-Greengrass Bourne-besotted days, relied heavily on hand-held or loose-head shots to give it movement. More important in such films is rhythm and pacing and I thought in the main this was handled well. A predictably enjoyable time-passer for my opening course.

Jim Henson (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

No surprises at all in the second course: Everything you need to know about The Muppets is there in the title. You either like Muppets or you don't. If you don't then I imagine you will just let this revival pass by. If you do, you will almost certainly welcome their re-appearance doing exactly what they were doing in the eighties and nineties, although in reality they've never really been away, certainly on TV specials and DVDs, and since Disney finally got their mitts on them in 2004 it was inevitable they would want the franchise to get out there and earn.
 

Image via Wikipedia

Personally I enjoyed the nostalgia and meeting my heroes Animal, Gonzo and Swedish Chef again (although these latter two weren't given an awful lot to do). The plot is as old as the hills and I'm sure the Muppets have used it before, let alone many others over the years. They need to raise money to pay off the evil landlord and stop their heritage being bull-dozed. There are some nice knowing little gags about the "getting the gang back together" cliche and I love the idea of "travelling by map" as unwittingly featured in so many cinema montage sequences.

The film owed more to the television series than their previous cinema outings like Muppet Treasure Island and Christmas Carol. All the Muppets returned as far as I could see but many didn't get to do much of their trademark stuff. All in all it was a welcome return but perhaps it was in the nature of testing the water and they will make a better, more original film if this makes money (and actually I think it's already done well in the U.S.). I hope so. I still love Kermit, Piggy, Fozzy and the gang and the fact that the work of the great Frank Oz and Jim Henson has ended up in the hands of the evil empire may ensure a future for them. I have to say I have mixed feelings about Disney. I grew up on the magic of their wonderful animated features and shorts and even though intellectually I don't like a lot of what they've done and stood for over the years I very quickly suppressed those doubts on a trip to Disneyland Paris. I want to believe in the magic and I want to hope that the revered Pixar and Henson businesses will prosper under Disney, not be stifled.

Anyway to return to the current film: As always there were a number of cameos and some joyful musical interludes. One of the songs has already been honoured by the Academy and for once I'm happy with their choice, especially as it was written by the "Flight of the Conchords" Bret Mckenzie. The brilliant Jim Parsons, "Sheldon" from The Big Bang Theory, featured in that one showing hitherto unguessed talents. Other non-muppet appearances included Jack Black in the typical reluctant celebrity guest role and briefer appearances from the likes of Whoopie Goldberg, Alan Arkin and the venerable Mickey Rooney who cut his teeth on this kind of "the show must go on" schtick what seems like centuries ago.

The non-Muppet stars are well-cast as believably good-hearted innocents from small-town middle-America - Jason Segel, who co-wrote, is Gary, (whose brother Walter is, for some reason I really don't think we need to trouble ourselves with, a Muppet) and Amy Adams who played Giselle in Enchanted, and I imagine has Disney written right through her, as much-loved homespun schoolmarm Mary.

The villain of the piece, a man so evil he gets his henchmuppets to do his "maniacal laugh" for him, is the always-watchable Chris Cooper, most familiar to me from the Bourne movies. Good cast, especially if you include Animal, Piggy and co. but am I trying not to say that I was slightly disappointed? Perhaps not, but in the main it did exactly what I expected of it, but no more.


The third film of the day, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, had a dream cast too: This time every mature lovey in the English actor directory: Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Dame Judy, Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup, Penelope Wilton, Tom Wilkinson... The owner of the hotel is young Dev Patel and there are brief appearances by some other young actors including the very young "the little girl off Outnumbered"  Ramona Marquez, but in the main this was reunion day for the actor/pensioners and the audience (which was the biggest of the day) reflected that, although it was interesting to note that age is no barrier to kicking the seat of the person in front or irritatingly dazzling them with the screen of your mobile device.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

This is a feel-good movie from what I hear is a very good book by Deborah Moggach (right). I'm prepared to believe that the book is better but then it (almost) always is...

The fact that it is clear who this film is for, and that the emotions it is going for are obvious, shouldn't detract too much. There is a place for this and it does make a change for a film to be targeting (albeit so shamelessly) a mature audience rather than going for the junior dollar with gooey, vampire teengirl wish-fulfilment nonsense. Anyway, I suppose I am the target audience for once and should probably go along with it.

At any rate it is a pleasure to see all these undoubtedly great actors in an ensemble of which we shall possibly never see the like again (unless it makes real money of course...). I'm a fan of most if not all these actors and my only criticism is usually that they are such hugely recognisable figures that it is hard to see them as characters other than themselves. For instance Dame Judy's turn in Jane Eyre stood out in a film with a fairly unknown cast in a way that detracted from the narrative flow. The best thing to do with these icons then is to stick them all together so no-one stands out like a sore thumb.

The other good thing about this film was that it wasn't written by Richard Curtis and the writing is fresher and sometimes really comes to life (It's by Oli "Grange Hill" Parker who hasn't done much film work as far as I know). There were a number of nice pithy one-liners.

Some of the story-arcs, notably Maggie Smith's harshly-spoken racist char mellowing into a sweet worldy-wise and warm-hearted business manager were less than believable in a film time-frame and probably worked much better in the book. Still I find her fascinating in all her roles and was quite happy to go along with it.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

While it was exactly what I was expecting and the third in a row to not surpass those expectations it was a warm, fun film (apart from the undeniably negative role played by Penelope Wilton) and judging by the slight ripple of applause, appreciated by its audience.

Can't stop (playing Steam)

Tuesday games were more satisfying because Crabro and I continued to explore expansions of one of our favourite games: Steam. It's nice when we hit on a game to which we want to give more time and a number of plays.

This has happened a number of times and although we have very different tastes in many things, it is a joy to find that our enthusiasms for certain games coincides. So far this was most seen in our passion for Richard Borg's games and in particular Commands and Colors: Ancients which inspired Crabro to give me the pictured T-shirt and thus the name of this blog.

This week we played three more Steam variants, after which I'm afraid I betrayed my lightweight status and asked if we could finish the day with something less taxing on my little brain.

The variants were: Andalucia, Umbria and Sardinia and the result was inevitably to demonstrate that Crabro is the better network planner. This was no surprise to me as he has always shown a very good eye for routes in our various train games.

Personally, I still thoroughly enjoy these games, and I'm glad I persevered after feeling so out of my depth in my very first 18xx game. Sometimes, these days, I surprise myself by actually being quite competitive though, and it is these games that I think we both enjoy most. In this case I actually won the first game (Andalucia?) albeit by a tiny margin. The second game (Sardinia?) was a run away win by Crabro but I do appreciate the compliment he pays me in making no concessions to my level of play and using "hardball" blocking tactics.

The third game was another win for Crabro but pretty close and a satisfying contest. Having been successfully starved of goods to run, I had no second run available in the last round but it could at least be said that the winning margin was in the range of a single run. I think we both had a grand time with our trains again anyway and would score all three of these variants highly.

Crabro kindly acceded to my plea for something simpler to finish on and we settled on a classic, simple Sid Sackson game: Can't Stop. Sometimes called "Roll or Don't" this is a pared down "push your luck" dice game. Both the games we played had similar endings: With Crabro poised to win, I had nothing to lose in pushing my luck and in both cases, contrary to my characteristic whinging, my luck held.

Stinky Games?

A full house for Thursday games and we decided to play The 3 Commandments.

I'm not going to say much about this because for once it was a game I didn't like and never really "got". It certainly engendered some hilarity and appeared to be a hybrid of party game and inductive reasoning game in the style of Zendo

Any game that has one of the players sticking the pieces up his nose, and another crawling around the floor, is at least different I suppose but I was only too happy when that fun ended and we were back on the more familiar ground of the popular card-trading game Bohnanza.

There was of course further giggling as questions such as "Have you got Stink?" (beans) and various ingenious constructions involving Wax (beans) inevitably have the same effect as the classic Settlers of Cataan trading query "Have you got wood for sheep?" So? I'm British and a proud citizen of the land of Carry On, Donald McGill and Benny Hill - Well perhaps more resigned than proud... Anyway if you think that's bad you should hear us playing "Spank the Monkey"

I have to say my mind has blanked most of the details of 3 Commandments and I couldn't tell you who, if anyone, won. I'm sure it wasn't me. Despite comments on the size of my pile of money, early in the game, I didn't win Bohnanza either. In fact I think I was joint last. I enjoyed it though and overall, as always, I enjoyed the evening. The company is good even if the same can't always be said of the games.

Image via Wikipedia