Sunday 10 February 2013

We gamed, we swore, we conked-out

Games weekends are to GNN what oases are to Nomadic tribes in the Sahara. A chance to group together, shelter from the harsh realities of life and, mostly, have a drink. This weekend was called to squeeze in as much gaming time into Anja and Steve's lives before the pitter patter of tiny feet starts waking them up at ungoldy hours.


I forgot my notebook, so my recollections may be vague or even just plain wrong. I managed to squeeze all the results onto both sides of an Agricola scoresheet, but in no particular order. In fact, there's one set of results that I don't know what the game is. It's the one with Ghent in it. That's all I remember about it, really.

We arrived at the cottage on Friday afternoon and soon noted how much smaller it was than the last one. Sure, it slept five quite comfortably, but we were entertaining up to nine (ten, including little one-year-old Tristan) so it was a bit of a squeeze. Plus, the bathroom was Condensation City, with the walls almost permanently wet.

No room in the fridge? Lucky it's cold outside!

The first issue on arrival was the curious situation of: no mobile signal, but we did have wifi. We were, at the same time, connected and yet not connected to the outside world. Adam went out to payphones and high hills, looking for a way to call people, but with no success. He ended up going all the way to Jon's house to tell him where the cottage was, but while Adam was out, Jon, Steve and Anja all arrived.

As for the games, what were the highlights?


In Ascending Empires, Jon spends ten minutes convincing Steve to attack Sam, not him. Finally persuaded, Steve flicks his ships in Sam's direction only to find he doesn't have enough firepower. When Steve challenged Jon on this point, Jon responded with "Why did you listen to me?"

My gaming achievement of an otherwise poor weekend was beating Sam twice at Mr Jack within three rounds, once as detective, once as evil killer. Meanwhile, Steve enjoyed Mr Jack but he criticised the game's lack of genuine Whitechapel atmosphere.

Mid-Cuba

Power Grid: In the final decisive round, Jon, Adam and Morag were chasing two houses. Bidding wars were fierce and when Jon found out he'd paid too much for the house and couldn't afford to power it, he simply bought up everyone else's fuel as a spoiling tactic, thus handing the win to the forward-planning Hannah.

Stanley's taste in films proved to be a hit.

Stanley was adorable when he explained how he didn't usually play all the rules to Ascending Empires because he was "a little bit smaller". He did, however, come third in a five player game of Carcassone (above Steve and Morag) and beat his sleepy dad at morning games of two-player Agricola and Carassone. I hope that made up for him having to eat on the floor because there wasn't a scrap of table-space left in the house.


Trans America. In the third round, three of us had cities in the north-east but it seems that each was waiting for the others to build there first, allowing Anja to take the round, go from third to first, and send us all crashing out. In terms of proportion, it was the biggest win of the weekend (Anja 7, Steve 14, Andrew 15, Sam 17).

The Resistance offered up it's usual mix of drama and disaster. Drunk, tired and emotional. That's my excuse for accidentally playing a success card in the final round, when I should've played a fail. These sort of things happen all the time in espionage. Also, why didn't we see the signs in game one when Adam went to check something in the instructions, and his hands were visibly shaking?

Fimo cows and wooden sheep

And after a very long Saturday, which involved swimming in the morning for some and ended in The Resistance until half past midnight, there wasn't much energy for gaming on Sunday morning. I slept until ten, and Adam and Stanley mostly played games on Adam's computer before we packed up and ended the weekend at Jon's house with a big brunch and a final few games.

As for the ultimate weekend winner, let us all throw our hats in the air and give a loud "huzzah" to Hannah, who won both points and points ratio to walk away as the undoubted champion. Sam won on the medal table.

7 comments:

  1. I played 14 games??? Are you sure? How did that happen?

    I'd like to thank everyone for booking, hosting, cooking, and generally being very good company and tolerant of us. Sorry we had to eat and go on Sunday. Stanley loved it all and so did I.

    14 games?

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  2. I've got you down as playing Colosseum, Tsuro x2, Tsuro of the Seas, Carcassonne, El Grande, Ascending Empires, Mr Jack x2, Biblios, Cartagena, Trans America and small Agricola.

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  3. Oh yeah. I'd forgotten so much, and was thrown that the person who arrived last and left first had somehow played the most games!

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  4. Sorry to have missed this weekend, it looks like lots of fun. Is that Cartegena in pic number five? I know not of this game.

    And how was Cuba? Should I hold on to it?

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  5. I didn't play Cuba I'm afraid. Andrew and I played Cartegena but that's not it in the pic. Nice and simple game about getting your pirates through a tunnel, though we played the simple version.

    Come on you Eastonites! Half the fun of going away is talking about it afterwards!

    I enjoyed visiting Ascending Empires again, and discovering Cartegena. Always love playing Mr Jack, even when totally trounced as I was by Andrew. But the gaming highlight of the weekend was definitely The Resistance, where I went from undetected spy to completely detectable idiot in the space of two games. Lovely.

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  6. Cuba is good. Have faith. If you don't have Puerto Rico, then Cuba fills the same role (and does it better, I think).

    Yes, it'd be nice to hear from the Eastonites, especially our new championess. I'll be honest, I didn't realise how badly Adam had done until I totted up the scores. Nearly as bad as me!

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  7. I'm here, I'm just not very funny. I had a lovely time. Highlights for me were playing piggy in the middle in the swimming pool with Stanley as extra random factor, lovely food, great company, oh, and the winning lots of games. We played Cartagena (liked) after brunch on Sunday, followed by Taj Mahal (still hopeless). And then on the way home we played 4 car games simultaneously: horse (Adam won), yellow car (Hannah won), three letter number plates (it's a collaborative game), and 20 questions (Andrew won).

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