Rolling back again

After last fortnight’s hiatus, games night at Roll For The Soul was back in full swing, with chips and wraps and beer. In fact, the City of Bristol was so excited about the return of GNN to its streets, that it set up some searchlights outside Colston Hall for no apparent reason!

I arrived last, with Joe, Adam, Katy, Martin and newcomer Tom about to plunge in Magical Athlete. Gonz and I started on Hanabi, a game which we had both only played once, and only had instructions in German to guide us. It was tricky, but we managed it. It feels different with two players. There are fewer distractions, and less opportunities for comedic acting as you try to influence the other players.

No idea what happened with Magical Athlete, but Adam said he hated it.

Then we split into a group of four playing Kingdom Builder and a group of three playing Palaces of Carrara in the gloom of candles and subdued lighting.

Guess who was playing Palaces... yep, me, Martin and Joe. We set forth once more to cover Italy with marbles buildings. We played twice and, amazingly, Martin was chosen as starting player both times by our clever random method. At the end of the first game, Joe trailed in last, with me in middling second and Martin off into the stratosphere in first.

Joe seemed to reach the end of his marble tether with that result. He was just about to admit that he and this game didn’t get on. But with the game set up, we were able to persuade him to try one more game.

As we did, we were slightly distracted by a man watching us from outside, drinking from a 1.5 litre bottle of water. He gave us a thumbs-up when he caught our eye. Probably a big Eurogamer.

This game was closer, thanks to some tricky end-game conditions. We all had to build expensive buildings this time. I went for a super luxurious 8-pointer in the exclusive neighbourhood of yellow marble. It got me a lot of money, but not many points.

In fact, this time it was a lot closer, with Martin scraping a win barely five points ahead of Joe and me close behind in third. This reassured Joe that perhaps there was a future for him and this game. It also made him suspect that going first may be an advantage.

Finally, the three of us set up a little light game to play while Kingdom Builder ended. It’s called Take It Easy! A title that tells you almost nothing about the game. It’s very simple. Everyone has a board of hexagonal spaces, and they all have their tiles laid out face up in front of them, except one who has their tiles face down. That person draws a tile a random, announces it, and then everyone else has to play the same tile from their collection, trying to match coloured lines together. In other words, everyone plays the same tiles onto their own board. You’d think that everyone would do the same thing, but no. And small differences soon become big differences.

We set up to play, and then Katy on the other table saw all our brightly coloured hexagons and abandoned the final points-calculating of Kingdom Builder (Tom won) and quickly switched allegiances to our game, with a “Screw you guys!” over her shoulder to her previous game-comrades as she left.

And so we four played. And it was fun, hoping for the right tile at the right moment was a bit bingo-ish. I even tried to come up with some bingo calls, but they didn’t catch on. Martin won that one, too, making him regret that Thursdays aren’t leaderboard.

After that, Joe and I set off into the rain and into the night. He forced me to go all the way up the Christmas steps. Like, from the bottom to the top! It was like being in boot camp but only if the commanding officer, instead of yelling insults at you as you struggled, asked if you thought maybe there’s an advantage in going first on Palaces of Carrara.