Wednesday 4 February 2015

A right royal knees up

This week's Tuesday followed hot on the heels of Monday. There were nine expected at Chez Adamandhannah, and while eight of us waited for the ninth we had a rousing non-leaderboard game of Pairs. This time we went for the official rules of one loser and the rest winners. At first it looked like Matt would be our first loser of the night, since he was poised on 20 points - one away from the losing score of 21. But then Ian swept past him to end the game with 23. The rest of us were winners, but Adam and Sam were best winners with 7 points each. The most challenging part was trying not to get crumbs of peanut shell onto the cards.

During this game, Andy turned up and we split into groups of three and six players. Adam foolishly mentioned he'd never played Impulse, so he and me were press-ganged into a game by Martin. The other six played That's Life, or Good Ludo as it could be called.

In the front room, Adam was told the rules and we set off into deepest darkest spacest. I got some luck early on. Martin attacked me when I had plenty of reinforcements, which got me some points, then I tried to plan some cards drawn randomly for the deck. They had to be the same colour or they couldn't be part of my plan. And they were! And later, by chance, I got two more cards to my plan so when I did it, I scored a bunch of points, putting me far into the lead.


But this was to be a blood thirsty battle-heavy game. Huge fleets of fighters roamed the skies, making me very nervous.


Martin and Adam fought their way back, and near the end, Adam was on 14 points, one move away from a win. I gambled and failed, ending my move on 18. Then Martin was able to get to the target 20 points, ending the game instantly.

Martin 20
Andrew 18
Adam 14

This space epic had taken so long that those in the kitchen had finished That's Life.


Katy 16
Ian 13
Andy 11
Matt 2
Hannah -4
Sam -5

They then split into two groups of three. Katy, Matt and Andy played Royal Palaces, a long and thinky game. It looked pretty daunting. Hannah, Ian and Sam went for Portobello Market. Afterwards, Hannah said she'd enjoyed her first go at this game. A glance at the scores might explain why.


Hannah 223
Ian 200
Sam 185

Us three dug out Port Royal. It had been a while, so Adam needed a little refresher of the rules, only slightly distracted by the sudden arrival of more peanuts mid-game. It was another close game, we me going past 12 to trigger the end of the game. A real gamble, though, since Martin and Adam both had a turn left. Martin got to fourteen points with his turn. This meant Adam, on 11, needed to buy three times on his turn to stand a chance of winning. Kudos to him - he went for it, but went bust trying to get that final ship.


Martin 14
Andrew 13
Adam 11

In the other room, Royal Palaces kept going, Hannah decided to make tea and Sam and Ian went head to head over Little Agricola, ending 42-40 to Ian. After that, Sam, Ian, Adam, Martin and I joined together for a rousing game of Timeline. It was close, but I ended up using an excuse so old that, if its invention was a card in Timeline, it would have been placed slightly after the formation of the planet: I had been dealt shitty cards. I got lucky guessing the discovery of Carbon 14, but I was relying on other people making mistakes. Which they did (Ian was surprised to learn that the brick was older than the wheel) but not enough. We ended the evening as we began: everyone a winner, except one.

Adam 0 cards left
Sam 0
Martin 0
Ian 0
Andrew 1

By now, Sam was ready to go home, and Royal Palace still hadn't ended (it says one hour on the box!). In the end, the result was emailed to me:


Katy 75
Matt 65
Andy 63







Points
Ian 1 2 2 2 2 9
Katy 1 1 2 4 2 10
Martin 1 1 1 5 3 11
Hannah 1 5 1 1 3 11
Adam 1 3 3 4 1 12
Sam 1 3 6 1 1 12
Andrew 2 2 2 3 3 12
Andy 3 3 3 2 4 15
Matt 2 4 6 2 2 16
Joe 4 2 4 3 5 18
Steve 3 3 3 4 5 18
Anja 6 5 3 4 5 23
Dirk 5 5 5 5 5 25

Finally, there was a brief discussion about setting up a Tuesday-only division, since Sam, Ian and I play so often, it's kind of becoming silly. So here it is for the season so far. And it's a complete whitewash by Katy, who takes Medal Table, Points and Points Ratio! Congrats, but there's still a long way to go.


6 comments:

  1. Just a quick correction on those Portobello scores Andrew, they all need an extra 100!

    Really liked That's Life. Good fun game. Nice to play Little Agricola again too.

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  2. Comparing this division to the last one, I think only 2 of my 3 wins last night made it in. Not that it's important or anything ;)

    Great night, it's lovely that we're regularly hitting 9 or 10 players now!

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  3. Ah, I see. I left off Blue Moon City. Martin rises to 2nd, I stay 3rd. Katy still top of everything except medal table, which now goes to Martin.

    Hmm, this Division may be interesting enough for me to post it each week.

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  4. Makes sense from a points perspective. Much fairer to those people with lives.

    Maybe Tuesday is the go-to division and there's an Extra Curricular division? Kind of like the premiership and the FA Cup. If it were a league.

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  5. I enjoyed Impulse right up to the moment when Martin doubled his score to win. Stupid minerals.

    Surely extra-curricular games is the Champions League? For those with a bit more dedication...

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