The Pink Lizard Face-off

A five-header tonight, comprising Johnny (a welcome back from paternity duties), Adam, Andrew and Joe, with Sam hosting. Since Popular Front and Mikerinos, Sam's two as yet unplayed games, could only do 4 or 6 players, we plumped for Ra as a non-evening-filling game. And a fairly tense Ra at that — two of the three epoch's ending in a bust, first for Joe, third for Adam.

In the end it was a tie between Adam and Andrew with 29 each, Sam a close second (third?) with 27. Had I not asked what the rules said about ties it would have stayed that way, but I did, and Andrew reluctantly announced that, according to the good Dr Knizia, ties are settled in favour of the player with the highest sun. Which was Adam. So final placings were Adam first, Andrew second, then Sam, Joe and Johnny (very big drop-off after Sam).

It wasn't even 10pm, so we moved on to Coloretto, a decent little card game with some push-your- luck similarities to Ra, but no bidding. Andrew, Sam and I had all played two-player games before, but 5 player was new to all of us. First game was the scene of the pink lizard face-off between Johnny and Andrew (I think), but in the end was a tie between Adam and Sam with 25 — Andrew (chief rule-checker) checked the rules, which contained no specifics for tie-breaking.

We played again, and Johnny, who'd placed fifth in the first game, came first with a storming 27 points. Sam came second with 25 points again, and I didn't write down the rest of the scores. But I think I might have lost.

I like Coloretto — I've had it for ages and it's grown on me. I don't love the artwork, and given that it has no theme, playing a regular card game with normal playing cards would feel that little bit more serious and grown-up somehow. But it's very clever, a good balance of luck vs strategy. A nice way to round off the evening, that little bit quieter than Perudo. And that's important when you're in your forties, as three of us are now.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	8	42.5	5.31
Joe	9	35.5	3.94
Andrew	10	33	3.3
Sam	5	24	4.8
Quentin	5	20	4
Hannah	3	11.5	3.8
Johnny	1	2	2