Thursday 3 September 2015

Climb Every Mountain!

Thursday - Sam (me) was joined by Matt, Ian and Andrew. As Matt was running late the three of us started the evening off with a quick blast of Love Letter. We'd all won a round each when Matt arrived, and Andrew claimed the decider:

Andrew - 2 cubes
Ian/Sam - 1 cube

We debated what to play but with Andrew keen, Ian curious and Matt amenable we elected to play K2 - unlike Tuesday's gentle sortie, we went for the brutal(er) winter side of the board, replete with shitty weather. I left one climber behind and with the other surged to the summit. I'd erected a tent just off the peak and planned to return to it to see out the winter - but I'd reckoned without Matt and Ian following close behind me - as the top of the mountain only allows one climber per space, I was stuck, and eventually expired.

Chilly

How I laughed despotically when Matt and Ian's climbers suffered a similar fate!

How I didn't laugh when Matt's remaining climber reached the near-summit and survived until the spring!

But it wasn't enough. Andrew's softly-softly approach had kept both his climbers alive, and even though they were the least daring, being alive apparently counts for something in mountaineering:

Andrew 10
Matt 9
Ian/Sam 5

Gone... all gone

We'd blasted through the Himalayas in short order, and if a few people had to die for our fun it wasn't going to stop us jumping into our board game time machine and travel back to ancient Egypt, for Matt's first play of Ra. We had an almost Ra-free first round, where everyone had time to consider their bids without the pressure of the auction track imploding. Matt carefully made sure he had high bidding tiles for round two - were they too high? He did seem reluctant to play them. Andrew meanwhile cursed his luck - especially on round three which saw his low bidding tiles abetted by a surfeit of Ras. At least he got the highest-bidding-tiles bonus, having gotten rid of his low bids...

Sam 35
Ian 27
Matt 18
Andrew 11

It was still not yet half past nine, so having all already played it, we broke out Beowulf. The risk option in this game is really what makes it - even when you play the rules all wrong like we did. We weren't out of the bidding when a risk failed (as we should have been) and we picked up scratches when we should have been picking up wounds.

Note the thematically empty crisp bowl

Oh well - a fun romp anyway, and one that we took a break from to sample Sally's home-baking. How Norse we felt - and must have looked - surveying the board in tense silence, eating raspberry muffins. I thought I might have won, had I not been hit with a double-wound from the dragon late on... but as it turned out, Andrew had the win sewn up either way...

Andrew 36
Matt 17
Ian/Sam 15

For the third time on the night Ian and I tied for last place!

We finished off with Pairs. This is already a classic at GNN and even my crappy Professor Elemental deck didn't ruin the game for us. Matt - at one stage at least nine points behind everyone - almost staged the greatest of all great Pair comebacks... but on the last round second place was enough for me, and when Ian and Andrew went bust I heaved a raspberry-scented sigh of relief.

Sam 23
Matt 21
Andrew 20
Ian 14

And that was that.


8 comments:

  1. If you fall behind in K2 are you left with a mountain to climb?

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  2. You want to avoid falling if you can.

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  3. Not going out when you fail a risk would make them much more attractive! But you were right that it is a scratch you get, not a full wound.

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  4. Oh yeah we were taking scratches for Risks. But we were also taking scratches from the Events where we later realised they should have been wounds.

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  5. Ah I see. There are some of both. The wounds come with two cards compensation, the scratches don't.

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  6. A fun evening with thematic music throughout (except Pairs) and even the sea shanties during K2 suited the mood if you didn't listen to the lyrics.

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  7. Oh yeah I forgot about the thematic music. It was nice eh? Even though the pan-pipes were too much in the end...

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  8. Mmm, Ra. Mmm, Beowulf. Mmm, raspberry muffins.

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