That end of term feeling

Tonight was the final evening of the most sparsely populated GNN season for a long time. For some reason, it had a knockabout craziness to it, perhaps because we were not battling until the final seconds over a hard-fought title, but instead watching me stroll over the finish line thanks to attendance alone.

We (Sam, me, Joe, Ian and Katy) began with Sam’s boys, Joe and Stan, indulging in a couple of rounds of Codemasters with pictures. I didn’t note the scores, but I do remember Katy’s impudence in suggesting I’d made a mistake in giving my clue. Although the spymaster is supposed to stay silent, I couldn’t let this go unchallenged, and I reminded her to “never patronize the Spymaster.”

Then, while Sam put the boys to bed, we decided what the next game might be. Isle of Skye was almost our choice, but we decided it might be a bit much with five players and two newbies.

Instead we went for Fool’s Gold as a nice push-your-luck game that everyone knew. Before long, the sledging started, with Joe loudly questioning my tactics on my first move.

After the generous first round (except for me, who’d played quite badly as Joe had noted) the game got meaner and meaner. Gems were snatched from our hands by false alarm cards, and gold nuggets were replaced by card after card of silt.

It was close at the end, with Ian beating Joe beating Katy on a tie-breaker.

Ian 26
Joe 26
Katy 26
Andrew 23
Sam 21

After this, Sam introduced us to Om Nom Nom, the simple game of trying to eat things without being eaten yourself. A load of dice decide how much of the lower two links in the food chain are available to eat and then the players decide which cards they want to play in order to eat those things. The clever bit is that everyone has a card from the uppermost link in the food chain. So, if you think “ah, there’s lots of flies, I’ll play my frog” then there’s probably someone else around the table who had already thought of that, and will play their hedgehog to eat your frog.

Doing things that no one else is doing seems to be a good strategy. I got lucky in round one, scoring 16 points while my nearest rival had but three. It was too big a gap to bridge. Meanwhile, Joe, with one point after two rounds decided to go Dirk for the third and final round. Dirk did better than Joe did.

Andrew 24
Ian 18
Sam 10
Katy 9
Joe 3

It was still early, and Joe had come to the realisation that you can keep drinking Budweiser and never get drunk. The games continued with Magician’s Night, the glow-in-the-dark game of pushing things towards other things.

Charging up our magicians

Since it’s only a four player, Joe decided to sit out the first game. There then followed a, shall we say, full and frank discussion about what Joe might be doing in the dark while we play. Sam claimed that there was a bit mid-game where the lights suddenly come on, in case Joe got any ideas.

As for the game, once we’d remembered how to set it up, Sam won.

After this, Joe played and Sam sat it out, with a win for Katy.

Since there are no placings, it can’t be leaderboard, but it was a lot of fun.

Next up, much to Katy’s despair, was Skull. She insisted that she didn’t like it and we insisted that she did. Or would, once she got the hang of it.

During the game, people kept coming up a cropper on Ian’s skull. However, he himself won no actual hands of his own, leaving him in last place.

1. Andrew, 1 flip, 3 tiles left
2= Katy, 1 flip
2= Sam, 1 flip
2= Joe, 1 flip
3. Ian, no flips

Finally, the played Pairs, as whiskey and Jaegermeister were brought down from the high shelf. Pairs was as Pairs is: blueberries killed off Ian and Sam. Joe didn’t score at all after round two. There was controversy near the end of the game when Katy, in first place, twisted for the match and Sam accidentally drew two cards. The card he initially showed was okay for Katy, but he took it back and played it again with the right card showing, which bust her. She complained, have briefly thought she’d won, but Sam was firm on the rules.

However, she only had to play safe in the next round and wait for enough people to go bust to win.

Katy 22
Andrew 18
Ian 16
Sam 12
Joe 8

Which ends the season! Congrats to me for my win in Points, and to Katy for the Medal Table, and to Adam for Points Ratio.