Saturday 3 August 2013

No Mining in Cornwall

One week in Cornwall with Sally's family; several games.

Some context first: the Arthur Clan love nothing more than a good chat, a conversation that can last for several hours, or ideally days, is the key ingredient to a good holiday. Whereas I start to flag after the initial niceties are over and pine for something involving cubes, where I can passively sit back and disengage from the world. So it was with some optimism that I packed seven or eight games for the trip.

However there were reasons not to be pessimistic. My brother in law Matt likes games and indeed, keeps threatening to come along to a GNN night one day. He's a pastor and our ongoing game used to be him attempting to convert me to Christianity and I tempting him with atheism. But we gave up when we realised neither was budging and I couldn't understand the books Matt was lending me. Matt's kids Joel and Anna are 13 and 11 respectively and hence are candidates for a game.

We kicked off on Saturday with Lords of Waterdeep. At this stage Matt and Joel hadn't arrived (having appointments with both God and Cricket) so it was a two-hander between Anna and I. Anna picked it up very quickly and was soon delivering Orcs to Mooport to the manner born. I thought I had it in the bag but my lack of Lord-appropriate missions meant she caught me at the end, and we shared an unlikely 158-all draw.

On Monday Anna and I cajoled the others into playing The Resistance, a game that went down well with the Arthur Clan a couple of Christmases back, partly due to Sally's mum forgetting her own identity. This time the early-game orders for tea supplied the confusion, as Sally immediately gave herself away by returning a face-up mission card. We restarted and this time there was barely time for debate as the Resistance got off to a decent start. One sabotaged mission later and we guessed who the spies were, and successfully overthrew the government.

On Tuesday Anna wanted to play Lords of Waterdeep again and I obviously wasn't going to protest. This time Sally's sister Suzie joined us, along with Matt and Joel. Anna and I went through the rules and I caught a glimpse of the future, playing something like this with Stanley and Joe in eight years time, as Joel - treated to a glass of wine earlier in the evening -  found it impossible to concentrate and decided the game would be improved by playing snippets of music on his ipad very loudly and farting and blaming his sister. As Suzie tried to stem the flow of testosterone Matt remained a picture of paternal calm, taking his time over his turn and as such, earning the scorn of his family.

We ended on round seven and Matt's pondering had earned him a win. Joel was second - although his game was pretty much a joint effort - and I was third, followed by Anna and Suzie. Matt professed to be a fan, although he's so laid back about everything it's hard to glean exactly when he's genuinely excited and when he's merely being polite. And Joel despite his apparent boredom wanted to play it again the next day! Kids, eh?

Joel, Anna and I also played Coup (I won), Anna and I played two games of Biblios (one win each) and Stanley and I had a go at cards-face-up Trans America (Stan won). On the last night I was hoping to pin down Matt on a game of A Castle for all Seasons but after a day of body-boarding, beach cricketing, sun-burning and getting Joe to bed at 9.45ing I was too shattered to play anything.

And in-between all the above we played about 10 games of Cube Quest.

And I got a cricketing lesson from Matt and Joel - literally and figuratively. I can now hold a bat the correct way and swing wildly like a tail-ender.

A sandcastle

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