Wednesday 7 August 2013

Brand new, you’re Metro

The first GNN Bristol meet for two weeks, and the first appearance this season of Steve and Anja. Joe and Hannah were away in far off places, so it was the five of us: the two hosts,Sam, Adam and I. After a brief spell of entertaining a laughing baby Luther, Steve took him off to bed while the rest of us began with a little No Thanks.

Sam went for my usual tactic of picking up low cards, while Anja went for the high-risk, high-reward strategy of going for the 30+ cards. And it worked. She got the cards 30-33 and at one point needed two hands to hold her coins. In the end, it was a convincing win.

Anja 10
Sam 31
Adam 33
Andrew42

Next up, with all five players round the table, it was a new game, freshly arrived that day: Metro. The Tsuro-esque train game involves building tracks for each of your trains, with points being earned depending on how long the track is. I found it quite frustrating. I wanted to turn my tiles to get the best outcome for me, but that’s against the rules: each tile has to be a particular way up. Then again, the game does allow for plenty of spoiler tactics as you can divert other trains back to the side of the board.


Sam picked up two big scoring tracks (20+) leaving the rest of us to splutter in his steam and smoke.

Sam 67
Andrew 41
Steve 38
Adam 37
Anja 36

After this saw a rare sighting of Condottiere. This simple yet difficult game of trumps over a map of Italy was new to Anja and Steve, so Sam talked them through the rules. Baffled at first, they soon understood the various cards. Several long-winded battles took place, usually during winter – when cards are mostly only worth one – which was exciting to watch, especially since it meant your opponents were using up all their cards.


Adam was master tactician extra-ordinaire: the game stipulates that three adjacent territories are needed, but he put together four. Anja came second with four territories, Sam next with three and Steve and me last with just two each.

Adam 4 in a row
Anja 4
Sam 3
Andrew 2
Steve2

Finally, what else to play just to round of the evening? Why, Cube Quest of course! Steve and Anja haven’t played it yet, so it was the obvious choice. We split into two teams of two and three, taking turns to flick our tiny hexahedrons of doom into each other. Or, more often, over the top of each other and onto the floor.


We played two non-leaderboard games, and Adam was on the winning side both times. This will go some way to compensate for his making the worse shot of the evening: while trying to position a cube to a more advantageous position, he flicked it so gently that it didn’t move at all.

A lovely evening, complete with Sam and I bringing identical packets of crisps and the hosts laying on the style with bowls of Hula Hoops. Blowing two weeks’ dust off the form table, and we see that Sam has nabbed first place in a very tight contest.








Points
Sam 3 1 2 1 3 10
Joe 3 2 1 1 3 10
Andrew 4 4 2 2 1 13
Adam1 4 3 2 5 15
Hannah3 4 1 4 5 17
Anja2 5 1 5 5 18
Miles2 3 5 5 5 20
Lizzy2 5 5 5 5 22
Steve4 3 5 5 5 22

2 comments:

  1. Bonus marks for the word hexahedron.

    hexahedron quest doesn't have the same ring to it.

    ReplyDelete