Wine bottles and cola cubes

On Sunday with the house still empty - and having spent a day doing tax return stuff - I whimsically texted Chris in case he could make it to Bristol… and he could! We sent out invitations and Andrew - despite the epic games session of the day before - came up to join us, and help me out with the 5-litre bottle of wine I've been struggling through over the weekend.

Before he got there I familiarized Chris with Camel Up, so when Andrew came in we were ready to dive straight into leaderboard action with a flurry of ungulatory betting.

But despite mine and Chris' warm-up game it was Andrew who romped home with the most winnings:

Andrew 31

Sam 24

Chris 18

With that palette-cleanser out of the road, we browsed the cupboard. Chris fancied playing something new and reasonably weighty, so I proposed Concordia. It was to be an epic battle! Concordia's unusual scoring system reminded Chris of Stone Age, and after taking over Spain, generating enough cloth to put a curtain around it, and getting a whole bunch of followers on the board, he was worried that he hadn't picked up enough cards for the end-game bonuses.

I was of a similar mind, but Chris' strong showing on the board was enough to score him a big 96 points - exactly the same as me, in fact. Chris won on the tie-breaker rule of holding (or being next to receive, in this case) the Prefectus Magnus card. Andrew had never seemed to get going to me and I thought maybe he was worn out from the camels - but obviously he'd been effective enough to stay competitive:

Chris 96 (wins on tie-breaker)

Sam 96

Andrew 88

Next up we pulled out Take It Easy. This game burnt bright for a good few weeks at GNN before sloping off to the cupboard; but I still really enjoy it. We stuck with our meme of announcing the tiles with a theme. Andrew did things from the eighties, I did B-Movies, and Chris did sweets-you-had-when-you-were-young, meaning 5-7-8 was cola cubes. 

I decided not to obsess over nines and curiously, it paid off:

Sam 537

Chris 505

Andrew 340

Andrew at this point said he was going to head off and Chris and I decided to do one more game before he too, went home. We chose 7 Wonders, at which point Andrew shucked his coat off again and sat down at the table. 

Not for the first time I elected to go for sciences, only to abandon the plan very early on. Andrew did them instead, and scored big - but neither of us got close enough to the 7 Wonder king, who combined military might with a hefty collection of blue buildings:

Chris 58

Sam 54

Andrew 49

Great to get Chris on the leaderboard, even if he won too many games for our liking! 

						Points
Sam	2	1	2	2	1	7
Adam	2	1	1	2	4	10
Joe	2	2	2	3	3	10
Martin	4	2	2	1	2	11
Chris	1	2	1	3	5	12
Andrew	3	3	3	1	3	13
Matt	3	3	3	1	4	14
Ian	4	4	3	3	2	16
Hannah	2	5	5	5	5	22