Ok, so normally I'm a night game man, picking up girls in bars and clubs. Nearly always they have been random 'strangers' who I met for the first time that night. Once or twice I've hooked up with a friend or coursemate but that has usually been a drunken thing.

Tomorrow though there's a bit of scenario that I've not been in before and I'm interested to see how you guys would handle it. We're "pre-drinking" at our house. There's 9 of us in the house, and we usually have a couple of hours just sitting around, chilling and having a few beers. It's a mixed group guys and girls. A friend of one of my housemates is coming over, apparently she's hot. I've never seen her and I'm not necessarily talking about this one girl in particular here, but it made me think how to go about gaming a friend-of-a-friend who comes into the group on a night like this.

Normally, in a group, I'd probably isolate her and go from there. But our house has got an open plan kitchen/living area, so throughout the predrinks the chances are we'll always be in the same room apart from going to the toilet (and following her to the toilet probably isn't going to have the best potential of starting off a conversation).

So any tips on gaming a girl in this situation? I suppose I would probably just join in the group conversation, keep it light hearted, bring her into the conversation, joke around with her, that sort of thing - build up a bit of tension until we get out to the club, where it will be easier to isolate. Any other ideas?

You're pretty much right on track. Try to be the life of the party if that suits your personality, and tease/flirt with her whenever you can. Once she's comfortable with that you can use kino. Make it a smooth transition and build the sexual tension steadily.

Don't limit yourself, you want to isolate, DO IT, there's truthfully nothing stopping you.
The difference is you want to isolate your conversation; telling a story that if anyone starts listening when you're in the middle of it they'll leave because they don't know what's going on. Build a quick inside joke that if someone tries to steal her away you can bring her back with "remember that part about the Indian terrorist?" or whatever your joke is, she'll most likely come back to you and the third person wouln't have anything to say (because obviously they don't get it).
Like snarg said use kino and the obvious things like being the popular guy at the party everyone likes and things like that

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