Friday 27 May 2016

Full Meta Boardgames

Tonight's Kubrick-esque post title comes courtesy of Andrew, commenting on my  (Sam's) Take It Easy choice of tile-calling. I'm pretty sure that sentence has never been written before and never will again.

But I get ahead of myself. We began, Andrew and I and Little Joe, playing Timeline. Stanley decided to watch/roam the house, and while I helped Joe as much as I could, we were no match for Andrew, who came through a solid winner on a game he has long professed to admire, but rarely gets to play:

Andrew - all cards out
Joe - one card left
Sam - two cards left

Now it was Stanley's turn, and we played Love Letter. It was, as ever, a feisty affair, and at one (late) stage it looked as though we might be tied on two cubes each. But I saw off Andrew's levelling efforts and secured the win:

Sam - 3 cubes
Stanley - 2 cubes
Andrew - 1 cube

I now packed the boys off to bed and returned to find Chris had materialised - or at least, come through the front door - and he and Andrew had set up Nations: The Dice Game. A quick rules-refresher and we were off.


To be honest I don't remember a huge amount about it now. except Chris's appalling luck with re-rolls. It's one of those games were you can theoretically counter your shitty dice rolls by making sure you have enough re-roll tokens in hand, but every roll Chris did saw him subsequently worse off. It was quite astonishing. Meantime I managed to see of Andrew and nab first place:




Sam 28
Andrew 25
Chris 22

We then played a game that I cannot recall and seeing as I can't read my own writing, will have to remain a mystery, unless someone enlightens us in the comments. But well done Chris on a fabulous victory!


Chris 109
Sam 72
Andrew 39

OK I've remembered it now - it was the Road to Canterbury (or Caolby, going by my notes) which we went for after a lengthy discussion that resolved in us choosing the game I'd suggested ten minutes before. Unusually for me I wasn't pushy - not that much anyway - but nobody seemed able to make a choice, and we kind of ended up with it.

Andrew was unimpressed at best (scores above) but Chris seemed ok with it. I really like it, but maybe that's because I shelled out for the thing, as nobody else seems to think it much cop. Oh well.

Fortunately for us we moved on from the slightly-damp squib to trusted favourite Take It Easy. And despite the ribbing about my apparent imminent win, it was Chris who ran away with it. The game was notable not only for his three straight victories in each round, but also Andrew's choice of racial stereotypes - I hasten to add, he was mocking casual racism rather than races themselves... I did boardgames (see above) and Chris did "depressing English towns" which he seemed to know an awful lot about, even if one of them was Penrith.

Chris 475
Sam 412
Andrew 293

We ended with a slightly mad game of Raj - the last four bids of the last round saw Chris and Andrew bidding the same card each time, and me picking up two positive and two negative tiles as a result. IT wasn't enough to get me anywhere near Andrew, who had scored an unbelievable 36 points in the first round (when I got zero and Chris got 6)

Andrew 66
Sam 39
Chris 30

Andrew headed off into the night and Chris and I played a couple of games of The Duke, which I believe has been described elsewhere in the blog but is a fun and fast distant relation of Chess. Chris won both times, which for me was fast but not quite so much fun. A good game, though.

4 comments:

  1. Nice to get Nations back to the table before we all forgot the rules again. I just didn't get on with The Road To Canterbury. I couldn't plan ahead at all, since the basic idea of the game (sin then pardon) seemed very slow. Maybe the relics are the way to go, because the only other way to get points would be to wait until the the board just happened to be what you need.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks guys for a fun evening. Canterbury is a strange game. I think the Relics holds the key to it as they break up the rather linear progression of the game. I wouldn't not play it again but I fear that other games of a similar ilk might step in front of it when it came to choosing. It doesn't out stay its welcome but I never know if that is damning statement.

    Thanks for playing Nations TDG again. Its nice to be able to get some use out of the games I stare longingly at in my games cupboard :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. The relics do mix things up quite a bit, yeah. But you can play much of the game not playing sin cards - as I did - and potentially win, I feel. Chris managed to grab that last place on the road though, and we should have stopped him pardoning luxury for 16 gold... I wouldn't argue it's a classic but o think it's a decent game.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ...although the fact I couldn't remember playing it a couple of hours later isn't exactly a ringing endorsement...

    ReplyDelete