Too Cool For Spool

And apologies to any GNNers present tonight who were expecting the blog title “Collectively Martin” which is how Katy described us when we all turned on her midway through Lords Of Waterdeep in an attempt to stop her victory. And the funny thing was, she was miles behind the leader at the time.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This weeks games were held at Sam’s and with just five in attendance (Katy and the collective martins: Sam, Ian, Matt and myself). Before Matt had even arrived, the rest of us were leaning towards Lords Of Waterdeep as the evening’s entertainment.

We began with some hesitancy over whether or not to include an expansion, but when we discovered the expansion quests were mixed in with the regular quests, the problem was solved for us. We added Skullport to the south of Waterdeep and explained how the skulls changed the game.

Matt sped into an early lead, completing a 40-point quest and then, just as we were catching up, another 40-pointer. Before long, he was way off around the score track, with the rest of us forming a tight little cluster in his wake.

If you look, you can see Matt's green counter in the distance

The game was notable for Katy feeling picked upon, Ian’s battle for starting player, Sam feeling disconsolate, me feeling like I never got going and Matt’s meteoric rise. Despite this, everyone except Katy had a big handful of skulls (minus points at the end) and everyone except Katy suspected she had the Building-bonus lord, so with an entire half of the board full of her shops, she was in line for a 30-point bonus at the end.

As such, we tried to block her as best we could, but it was to no avail. She was able to remove more skulls from Skullport from the game, meaning our already large deficits would grow even larger. Meanwhile, Sam’s last go must have broken some kind of record for most retakes, as he tried to squeeze out one final quest from the available options. He couldn’t, and just satisfied himself with getting a load of money for points.

Katy 114
Matt 108
Ian 92
Andrew 92
Sam 70

At this time it was around ten o’clock, so we chose Knitwit as a quick game before, perhaps, we ended with Push It.

Knitwit, though, is longer than you think. Especially if you have to explain the rules. Katy spent most of the time during her tutorial frowning in bemusement. But after one practice round, she seemed up to speed.

The point about Knitwit is its subjectivity which might be a nice change after the strict rules of a Eurogame, but also allow perfectly good definitions to be disallowed. I’m referring to Katy and Matt who were so STUPID to think that the Elephant’s Graveyard (clues: mythical and sad) was A REAL PLACE! When of course, it isn’t. Ian abstained, so their objection was carried, despite its clear injustice.

This is important because the scores after the three rounds that we agreed on was a four-way tie with Sam, Katy, Ian and me on 29. If “Elephant’s Graveyard” had been accepted...

We played one more round as a tie-breaker and Katy stole a win.

Katy 44
Sam 42
Ian 41
Andrew 40
Matt 34

But, despite the Elephant’s Graveyard travesty I won’t give myself a post-hoc victory on the leaderboard, even though I deserve it. Instead I will spend most of next week mocking Ian, Katy and Matt for their ignorance about mythical places, and implying that they must therefore also think astrology is real and that unicorns can cure cancer.

Apart from that digression from common knowledge, though, the game was an palpable hit. Smart, quick and wise. We quickly decided to give bonus points for funny answers, and it was a lot of fun. There were a few answers that were refused: Katy’s reply to “Famous” and “Abundant” was Rolling Stones. Because they’re famous, and there’s a lot of them during avalanches. There was also some in depth discussion about the difference between “mushy” and “soft”.

But after four rounds of Knitwit, we were approaching eleven and so we called it a night and Push It would have to wait another week.

On the leaderboard, Katy maintains top spot.