End of term report

A series of potential absentees on Tuesday meant that the last evening of this three-month season was brought forward to Monday. This meant that, although Quentin still could not make it, Hannah was able to attend. So it was me (Andrew), Sam, Joe, Adam and Hannah. At stake in this final evening was Andrew’s attempt at overtaking Joe on points scored, and Sam trying to overtake Quentin on points ratio.

We began with a new game, Blockers. This strategy game of placing squares in a grid was new to most of us, but simple enough that inexperience wasn’t an issue. It was accompanied by a lot of humming as people considered each move, and the final scores put Adam and Hannah joint first, since Joe forgot the tie breaker rule until later in the evening.

Hannah 4
Adam 4
Joe 5
Sam 5
Andrew 7

This was followed by Ticket To Ride. It’s simple, yet tense and with the option to be evil. Despite its popularity, this game is not played very often because Adam is worried that if he brings it, Hannah will complain that he’s practising without her. Joe put on some music which was more suited to trains, although it seems his idea of a train is one that derails and crashes down a hillside in a be-bop jazz style, causing distress to any witnesses.

Joe and Adam began by hoarding cards which made me panic and start building my longest route almost immediately. By the end, I was quite proud that my route from Brest to Sevastopol was the shortest possible. Halfway through, Hannah chose to pick up more short routes, but accidentally replaced all except one she had already completed meaning any chance to score big points had gone begging. Sam – the only newbie to the game today – quickly targeted the longest route with a long looping track that took in most of the eastern Mediterranean. In the end Adam won, with the rest of the rabble following behind.

Adam 127
Sam 119
Andrew 113
Joe 112
Hannah 106

Just to finish the evening, Blockers was brought out again. I wasn’t keen, but was outvoted. As it turns out, they did me a favour as I clocked up a win, thanks to Joe remembering the tie-breaker rule (marked with an asterisk).

Andrew 5*
Joe 5
Hannah 6
Sam 7*
Adam 7

And so we come to the end of the season leader board.

Thanks to two victories, Adam was able to extend his lead over all rivals in both points scored and points ratio. So he takes all the plaudits as undisputed champ of this trimester.

Regarding second place: Andrew ended one solitary point behind Joe in terms of points scored, giving second place to one of the best new illustrators in Britain. Meanwhile, Sam took full advantage of Quentin’s absence to increase his points ratio to take back second. But no one was expecting Hannah to suddenly steal up from behind and nab third from Quentin: the man who gave us this scoring system in the first place!

An extra light-hearted addition for the end of term is the absolute score. This was created by simply adding up the scores of the games (whenever mentioned in full, reversing the scores in games where scoring less wins). Obviously it's not to be taken too seriously since winning at Blockers gets you 7 points, whereas winning at Genoa gets you 700+.

Adam came fourth in this category, which is interesting since it shows he only wins low-scoring games. Meanwhile, I romp home in first thanks to me not having anything better to do with my Tuesday evenings. Hurrah!

And if there’s an absolute score, there has to be an absolute ratio. Right? Right! And it’s Sam who takes first place in this average-most-points-scored-per-game, with Joe in second.

But everyone’s a winner, babe, and that’s the truth!

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio	Absolute	Abs. Ratio
Adam	18	90.5	5.03	1,353	75.17
Joe	20	80	4	1,893	94.65
Andrew	22	79	3.59	2,065	93.86
Sam	17	71	4.18	2,010	118.2
Quentin	10	41.5	4.15	342	34.2
Hannah	6	25	4.17	255	42.5
Jonny	1	2	2	NA	NA