The slowliness of the long distance gamers

After a long gap since the last official GNN meet, you would think that we'd be eagerly clawing the lids of boxes, desperate to get some cardboard on the table. Instead, we found that several of us were just getting over a cold, chucking down cough sweets and generally looking a bit sluggish.

And so we began the evening with a quick light-hearted game that soon bogged down into studied pondering. It was a new game, Love Letter. The theme of this game is that you have to get a letter to the princess, but in practice, you are playing a very Coup-like game, whereby each card has an action, and when you discard one of your two cards, you have to do that card's action.

This game has already been dismissed by one of Joe's daughters as not having enough strategy, but you wouldn't think that if you saw us thinking carefully over every move. Joe came away the winner in a "first to three" match with the rest of us not far behind.

Joe 3
Sam 2
Adam 2
Andrew 2

After this, we were half wondering if Hannah was going to join us, and so we played Biblios to fill time until her possible arrival. It's a game that needs no introduction, but some kind of strategy guide would be nice. We all considered our moves cautiously, and Sam came out the winner in a low-scoring game.

Sam 5
Adam 3
Joe 2
Andrew 2

Then Adam checked his messages to find that Hannah had texted ages ago to say she wasn't going to be able to make it after all. So we decided on the main course for the evening. Since it was quite late, we decided on 7 Wonders.

It's been a while since this game saw a proper run out with us experienced gamers, and once again we slowed the game to a grind with our deep strategising. It also saw the return of the famous way of prompting/annoying a still-thinking opponent by repeatedly tapping cards on the table, making a noise not dissimilar to the drumming legs of a frightened gerbil.

However, it looks like my time spent on the two-player variant served me well, as I snatched a close win with two guilds, big points for my Pyramids (pun intended, but not the innuendo) and a sudden conversion to military might in the last round.

Andrew 56
Joe 55
Sam 52
Adam 44

With our heavy eyelids threatening to fall shut, we decided on a final light game: Skull and Roses. This simple yet devious game of bluff was, at least, quicker that the previous three games. In the end, Sam was the first to make two correct guesses and Adam, who just kept saying "pass" as I recall, snuck into second.

1st Sam
2nd Adam
3rd Joe
4th Andrew

Finally, it's time to dust of the form table to see how things stand, and we find that Sam is the new leader.

						Points
Sam	1	3	1	2	3	10
Anja	2	1	2	2	3	10
Adam	2	4	2	2	1	11
Joe	3	2	3	1	2	11
Hannah	4	1	1	2	3	11
Andrew	4	1	3	2	3	13
Steve	1	2	2	4	6	15
Jon	3	5	1	5	5	19
Quentin	1	5	5	5	5	21