by A.J. Coltrane

GNOIF #7 Recap  —  GNOIF Suggests That Coconuts Migrate  (Medieval/Castle Theme)

Games That Got Played:  Cards Against Humanity, Citadels, Gardens of Alhambra, Guillotine, Magic the Gathering, Mystery of the Abbey

Games That Didn’t Get Played:  Agricola, Fjords, Fluxx (Python), Hector and Achilles, King of the Elves, Munchkin, San Juan, Settlers of Catan

I don’t know if it was the variety of caffeine-spiked beverages we were consuming, or what, but the gaming didn’t wrap up until about five in the morning(!) The record turnout could have contributed to that too — almost double that of any other GNOIF. We may need to purchase another card table, or a low table to put near the couch. Maybe something like this, though it’s only 27 inches square. It might work for a small game.

We started the evening with a game of Alhambra. It’s a good warmup game because it’s fairly simple and goes fairly quick. Four of us (2.5 new players) learned the rules and completed a game in about 35-40 minutes. Thanks to JH for correcting us on the scoring rule that we had been doing wrong since we’d bought the game. I had thought the game was unbalanced to the point of broken. It’s a dramatically better balanced game when played the right way.

I played a few games of Citadels. We started the evening playing with seven players, and the game “worked” with that many people. Later in the evening we played with four players, and it works that way too. Learning the game I’d played with two players and I enjoyed it that way as well. Point is, the game seems to scale to more players really well, and even with seven players it didn’t take an hour. (Though we only played to 6 districts all night in the interest of keeping the games breezy and fast. The games didn’t really seem to suffer for it.)

While I was playing Citadels, there was an epic game of Mystery of the Abbey. I could swear that they had 11 players, though the box says 3-6 players, and there are only 6 “Monk” miniatures. Maybe somebody who played could comment on how they swung that?

Cards Against Humanity was a hit again. The game seems to benefit from being played late — after the aggregate beverage consumption has passed a certain critical threshold.

The game that seemed to get the most portmortem was Guillotine, with it’s abundant coulda-shoulda-woulda events.

Thanks to everyone for playing! (And yeah, in retrospect the better name was “GNOIF Of The Round Table”. Oh well.)

 

by A.J. Coltrane

GNOIF #6 Recap — GNOIF And Punishment (Crime/Corruption Theme.)

Games That Got Played:  Cards Against Humanity, Guillotine, Rocketville

Games That Didn’t Get Played:  Family Business, Gloom, Mr. Jack (travel and full-size) Mystery of the Abbey, Pirate’s Cove, The Worst Card Game Ever, Revolution

The hit of the evening was Cards Against Humanity. Visualize Apples to Apples, only make it R-rated, and make the object to be funny rather than to have similar/evocative meanings. In our case it evolved into “how foul can you be?” As one player said “There are some of these words and phrases that I’m not sure that I want to admit that I know what they mean.”

Full disclosure: I HATE Apples to Apples. Quoting a guy from the boardgamegeek forums:

Apples to Apples isn’t really a game. Even by the standards of party games, it’s not really a game. The problem is that WHAT you do has no bearing on HOW you do, and HOW you do doesn’t matter.

I contend that if neither your actions nor the outcome matters, then you don’t have a game.

I think the reason that Cards Against Humanity worked better is because the object was only to be funny. That, and because we’d all had some beverages, and the game itself is so over the top sometimes. Looking at the boardgamegeek page, we also happened to hit the sweet spot on the recommended number of players (6-8).

Perfect crowd, fresh/new material = lol funny… some people were about falling out of their chairs.

Definitely the most laughing at any GNOIF so far.

 

 

by A.J. Coltrane

GNOIF #3 recap: GNOIF Just Wants To Have Fun (Ladies choice of games)

Games That Got Played: Dominion; Gloom; Forbidden Island; Agricola; Ticket To Ride – Europe

Games That Didn’t Get Played: Mr. Jacket (Pocket); Ticket To Ride (Card Game); Starship Catan; Monty Python Fluxx

The big hit of the night was Forbidden Island, though both Agricola and Ticket To Ride (Europe) got a lot of post-mortem conversation.

We won the Forbidden Island game that I played in. The concept of the game is that the island is sinking, and that you and the other players team up to try to gather four treasures from the island before it completely submerges beneath the sea. The island is represented by 24 tiles, and in the game that I played we had two tiles that were still above water when we escaped the island.

The other group lost their game when a key tile sank early on, splitting the group in two. Eventually a critical treasure tile sank, ending the game. Had that tile not sank they would have won on the next turn!

 Thanks to everyone who played

by A.J. Coltrane

GNOIF #2 recap: GNOIF From The Crypt.

The Games That Got Played: Last Night On Earth – the Zombie Game; Mystery of the Abbey; Mr. Jack (small box); Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Games That Didn’t Get Played: Dracula; Vampire Hunter; Munchkin Zombies; Mr Jack (Hex based/ large box).

One group played an exciting game of Last Night On Earth:

Billy the Track Star and Sally the school Sweetheart began the zombie invasion in the high school. Jake the Drifter came in from the road out of town, and Nurse Becky began at the Old Truck in the center of town. The heroes goal was clear — they had to find gasoline for the Old Truck, the Truck Keys, and make a getaway out of town.

Everyone ran for the high school, hoping for strength in numbers. (And really, how often does “let’s split up” end well in horror films?) That idea worked well, until the power was cut to the high school and the school was overrun by zombies. In the photo below the heroes are beating back the zombies and trying to make it into the school gym:

Billy found the Keys, but time was running short before nightfall, and the zombie horde kept coming. The heroes also had to deal with a sudden rainstorm, making outdoor movement tricky and slow. A decision was made: The heroes would make a run for it! Billy sprinted to the opposite corner of town – to the gas station to pick up a can of gas, and the others ran for the Old Truck. Our heroes all met at the truck, but unfortunately, so did the zombies:

 

Our heroes managed to fend off the zombies long enough to start the truck and speed away!

Last Night on Earth recommended here. Betrayal at House on the Hill recommended here.

GNOIF #3 date TBA!

by A.J. Coltrane

GNOIF: The Awakening, has come and gone and I think everybody had fun, so I’m going to call it an unqualified success.

We put out a selection of games, from left to right:  Fluxx, Caesar and Cleopatra, Lost Cities, Mr. Jack, The Gardens of Alhambra, Forbidden Island, Ticket to Ride, Dominion, and Agricola. The games to the right are the more complex games, the quicker and simpler games are to the left.

Note that there’s also some text on the cards– each game got a short description to help everyone decide what they wanted to play. (The dice were keeping the cards from blowing away. It was a windy and hot day, and we had the windows open.) I’m not sure if anyone read the cards.

What we played:  Fluxx, Lost Cities, The Gardens of Alhambra, Forbidden Island, and Dominion.

What we learned:  Next time I’ll show people the more complicated games *before* the beverages begin to add up.

Thanks to everyone who played! 

Next up — GNOIF:  GNOIF from the Crypt!

Thanks to D for the cool shirts celebrating the inaugural GNOIF:

by A.J. Coltrane

The GNOIF design document/faq post.

Q1.  What is GNOIF?

A1.  GNOIF is the Game Night Of Indeterminate Frequency. The schedule will likely be to do a GNOIF at least quarterly. Basically, GNOIF will happen on periodic weekend nights where Something Else didn’t get in the way.

Q2.  What do I bring?

A2.  BYOB and snacky food (please don’t bring anything messy and/or sticky, to avoid collateral damage to the games). Make a point to eat before you come. This will allow us to focus on the games, and to avoid the logistics of ordering/paying for food. The thought is that if you eat around 4-5 pm you can live off snacks and beverages the rest of the night. Feel free to bring that game you’re amped about, but don’t count on it getting played unless someone else gets excited about it too.

Q3.  What will we play?

A3.  If we break games into three groups based upon how “involved” they are:

Little (or Light) Games:  5 minutes to learn, less than 40 minutes to play.

Medium Games: Around 10 minutes to learn, about an hour to play.

Big (or Heavy) Games: 10+ minutes to learn, 90+ minutes to play.

We’ll be providing something like 2-3 light games, 3-4 medium games, and a heavy game or two. Note that we will *not* be playing anything from the Fred Meyer Wall Of Games. You know what I’m talking about. The focus will lean towards newer and more innovative games. Stuff we haven’t already played a million times.

My suggestion is to let people collectively decide what they want to play. I would encourage everyone to limit the number of people per game to 3-4 players. Limiting the number of players will make the games go *much* faster, decreasing downtime between turns (yawn) and allowing everyone to try multiple games in a night if they want to. There should be plenty of time for at least two playthroughs of the games.

Of course, if 4-5 people want to hole up all night with a complicated game that’s fine too.

————

Other stuff:

The plan right now is to give each GNOIF a title that sounds like a movie, starting with – 

GNOIF: The Awakening

Expect to see writeups/post mortems posted on this website.

That’s about it, try to show up early/on time if you want to maximize your gaming!