6th October 2020

For the first time in nearly 7 months we're in Woking at 'The Sovereigns'. The last we were here was the 17th March!

The Woking Gaming Club isn't really back up-and-running yet, but a few of us have raised our heads above the parapets to wave the flag and of course; play some games.

The first game of the night was 'Medium', a light word-association card game.

What's in a game?

• ​Medium cards; there are 270 of these, each card displays a single word, written normally and upside down so two people can easily read them at the same time.
• Crystal ball cards; there are 3 of these, each one has an illustration of a crystal ball.
• Scoring tokens; there are 3 types of double sided scoring token, scoring 5-6, 3-4 or 1-2 points. On the other side they are numbered 1, 2 or 3.

That's it for the components, the quality is perfectly acceptable and the small amount of art used in the game is also OK.

How's it play?
Before play begins the deck must be created, the number of cards used depends on the number of players. The deck is shuffled and the 3 crystal ball cards are shuffled into the bottom third of this deck.
6 cards are then deal to each player.
Finally, the scoring tokens are laid out with the scores face down and the 1, 2 and 3 numbers displayed.

• Medium is both a competitive and cooperative game, this means that the active player will partner up with the player to their left.
• The active player and their partner in turn each play a single card facing each other. Thus there will be 2 words displayed. 
• Now both players try to think of a common word between the 2 displayed words (It can't be a word on the two cards.). When they're both ready, they both count down 3... 2... 1... and both say their word simultaneously.
• If the 2 words match; then a number 1 token (Worth 5-6 points.) is placed between the 2 players and play progresses to the next player.
• If the 2 words don't match; then the 2 players must guess again. Except this time they must try and find a common word between the 2 different words they just spoke, not the words on the cards, furthermore they can't use the words on the cards or any previously spoken words as the common word. If the 2nd guess succeeds, then a number 2 token (Scoring 3-4 points.) is taken. If they failed again, they get a 3rd and final attempt using the last 2 words they spoke, the same rules above still apply. Success means a token scoring 1-2 points is taken, failing a 3rd time means they score 0 points.
• Play progresses until all players have been the active player, then all players draw cards to refill their hands.

Endgame
Play continues until the 3rd crystal ball card is drawn, which triggers the endgame. The game then continues until the current round is completed and all players have had an equal number of turns.

Each player then tallies up the scores from the tokens to their left and right​, highest score wins!

Overall
There's not much to say. As you can see from above, Medium is a light game that may appeal to casual players, it is a game that can be quickly learnt.

It's not a deep game either, random chance can play a part and sometimes you'll get 2 words that have no obvious commonality. There is some room for strategy in Medium though. The player that goes 2nd will have the opportunity to play a hopefully suitable second word.

We didn't play the game extensively, but it seemed if a common word wasn't guessed first time, the 2nd and 3rd guesses weren't going to be any better.

It's a strangely stressful game, I think it's because your guess will also affect your partner's score.
Conversely; when it's not your time, observing how other people play is fun.

One potential issue was the scoring, each 'level' of scoring has a 1-point variation in its score and some people are not fond of it. We house ruled it and used the other side of the tokens for scoring, a successful first guess would get 3 points, down to 1 for a successful 3rd guess.

If you like somewhat stressful word-association games, then you might like this. Easy to learn and play, it's a reasonable little filler game.

24th November 2019

Sunday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues.

The next game was 'Codenames'.
I have it on good authority that spies, above all other things, really like having  codenames.
So it's a good thing that the game 'Codenames' is all about spies.
Actually, it's a team based card game about words, but I digress...

Whats in a game?
blah

• Word cards: Word cards are double sided and as the name suggests have a single word written on each side. There are 200 cards, so 400 words available.
• Key cards: Key cards are square cards used to identify which word cards belong to each faction (More on this below.). There are 40 cards and they can be used in any of 4 orientations, giving 160 combinations.
• 8 blue agent tiles: For the... blue team
• 8 red agent tiles:  Yes, for the red team.
• Double agent tile: A double sided double agent, blue on one side and red on the other.
• 7 innocent bystander tiles: These are white.
• Assassin tile: Black as the assassin's heart!
• Hourglass: An optional timer, used if player's feel the need to hurry the game or stress the players!

The word cards are standard cards without artwork. All the tiles are made of thick card and are well illustrated.

How's it play?
Codenames requires a bit of setup.

• All players must be split into 2 teams (Red and blue.) and each team should assign one player to be their 'spymaster'. Give the red & blue agent tile stacks to their respective spymasters.
• The word cards should be shuffled, then 25 cards should be drawn. Place these cards in the playing area in a 5x5 grid.
• Shuffle the key cards. 1 key card should be drawn only by the 2 spymasters. The key card will show the location of the blue and red agents, as well as innocent bystanders and 'the assassin'. Finally, the key card dictates which team goes first.
• Give the double agent tile to the starting team's spymaster, who should flip the tile to their colour and add it to their stack of tiles. Thus the starting team has 9 tiles instead of 8.

Now we're ready to go.

• The objective of Codenames is for the each team to find the words in the 5x5 grid that represent agents of their own colour. However only the spymasters know these locations. The spymasters try to pass on the locations to their team through the use of cryptic clues.
• The clues that a spymaster may give depend on the word cards available to them and is limited to a single word and a number.

For example:

• The blue spymaster may know that the word cards 'cat', 'pigeon' & 'ant' are all blue agents, so the spymaster might say, "Animal, three.". 'Animal' because they are all animals and that words links them all and 'three' because there are 3 of them.
• Once they've been given a clue, the rest of the blue team must try and guess which words in the grid that the clue applies to. To choose a card, one of the players must touch that card.
• If a blue word is selected, the blue spymaster covers that word card with a blue agent tile. Because they selected correctly, the blue team can continue selecting cards, up to 3 times (Which was the number the  spymaster gave.).
• If the blue team selects an innocent bystander card, then it is covered with an innocent bystander tile and the blue team's turn immediately ends.
• If the blue team selects a red agent, then the red spymaster covers the card with a red agent tile and the blue team's turn immediately ends.
• If the blue team selects 'the assassin', that word is covered with the assassin tile and the blue team immediately lose the game!
• A team has to make at least 1 selection, they do not need to make any more and can pass at that point. Thus, the blue team may make up to 3 selections, but after the first selection, they can pass on the rest.
• Furthermore, on a following turn, if the blue team correctly selects all the cards on for the clue for that turn, then they can attempt to select a card that they passed on in a previous turn.
• Once a team has finished with its selection, play progresses to the next team.

Overall
When describing Codenames I've not really explained the dilemma and challenge facing the spymaster players.

The example I used had 'cat', 'pigeon' & 'ant' as all being blue. But in reality, it's more likely that not all of them would be the same colour, 'pigeon' might be red. Now the blue spymaster could simply say, "Animal, two.". But then they run the risk that the team might select 'pigeon' instead of the other choices and if they select the wrong word first, it stops their turn straightaway!

So the spymaster has to select clues that don't draw their teammates to the wrong answer. This can be downright tricky.
Now the spymaster could play it safe and select, "Meow, one." for 'cat' and use 1 word clues. The problem with playing it safe though, is that it probably won't win you the game unless you're already ahead.  So doing 2 or 3 word clues can be a good way of getting ahead.

The same principle applies to the other team members. When the spymaster gives you a clue for 3 words, managing to find all of them grants the team a good advantage. But getting wrong can prove a bad thing.

It's a good implementation of a 'risk/reward' mechanic. A successful risk pays off and a unsuccessful risk penalises.

There's only one small drawback to Codenames and that is that it basically needs at least 4 players to play and ideally even numbers of players too.
The game goes up to 8 players, but I can't see a reason why team size should be limited to 4 (Other than it takes a longer to come to a consensus with bigger teams!).

Codenames is easy enough to learn to be a 'crossover' game and has a high replay value. It's probably a bit too long for a filler game, but makes an excellent party game. Particularly when with larger groups and/or family members. 

2nd July 2019.

Tuesday has arrived and gaming night with the 'Woking Gaming Club' at 'The Sovereigns' beckons.

Whilst waiting for the later arrivals, a quick game of Just One was played. You can read my thoughts about it here.​

25th June 2019.

Tuesday night gaming beckons at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

The evening was kicked off by the word game 'Just One'.

Just One is probably the best cross-over game ever. This is a co-operative party games that anyone can learn and easily play.

What's in a game?

​​The game comes with the following components.

• Deck of cards with 5 words written on one side on all of them.
• Plastic name/card display stands.
• Dry wipe pens and (With dry wipe erasers.).

That's it, all these components are plain and purely functional. It's like someone made a game out of the crap left over at then of a conference or something similar - well except for the deck of cards!

How's it play?

Firstly the deck of cards is shuffled and 13 cards are dealt face-down into it's own separate draw deck. The remaining cards can be placed back in the box, they are not needed for the game.

• A name/card stand and a dry-wipe pen/eraser is given to each player
• The 'active' player draws a card from the 13 cards and (Without looking at it!) places their card stand with the 5 names facing away.
• The active player then chooses a number from 1 to 5.The 5 names on the card each correspond to the numbers 1 to 5. Thus if the active selects '2', then word 2 on the card becomes the 'selected' word.
• The other players must use their dry-wipe pens to write clues on their on their own card stands to help the active player guess the word.
• However, the other players can only write one word as a clue - as the name suggests 'Just One'!
• The clue must be written in secret from ALL other players. When all the other players have written down a single-word clue each. Then the clues are compared to all other player's clues (All clues must not be shown to the active player.).
• Any doubles are all removed from the round.

So if the word is 'Cat' and the clues are 'Sylvester' 'Meow' and 'Whiskers', then all 3 clues are permissible.
If the clues were 'Sylvester', 'Sylvester' and 'Whiskers'. Both iterations of 'Sylvester' would be erased and removed from the round and only 'Whiskers' would be left.

• After any eliminations are dealt with, the remaining cards are shown to the active player. The active player should try to guess what the selected word is from the available clues.
• The active player can choose to make a guess or pass.
• If the active player chooses to pass. The card is placed into discard pile.
• If the active player makes a guess... and gets it wrong: Then the card is placed into the discard pile and another card is drawn from the draw deck and is ALSO discarded in the discard pile.
• If the active player makes a guess... and gets it right: Then the card is placed into the scoring pile.
• The player to the left of the active players becomes the next active player
• Play continues until there are no cards left.
• All the cards in the scoring pile are tallied up a collective score is generated. The higher, the better. 

Overall

My only gripe about this game, is in the selection of words. Some types of words are a lot easier to get clues for.

Example
'Cat' for example is easy, I can think of lots of possible clues.
'Panther' on the other hand is a lot harder to think of clues for. I think of 'Black', but that's about it.

Just One also has a little more nuance to it than what you would expect.
The rule about removing duplicate clues is what makes the game in my opinion. Going for an obvious clue risks having 2 or more clues removed from the game! But going for something too obscure risks muddling the clue.

But overall all, Just One is party game that's for up to 7 players, that is also co-operative and is easy to learn.

What's not to like?