Matches of the Day

Saturday! Andrew rolled up to the house at 7.30 and Stan joined us for the first game of the evening, which was Ninjato. Stanley had won something like seven in a row of this game, both two-player and with his friend Peppa. It was entirely new to Andrew, and though the mechanics of it are pretty straightforward, the tactics require a little familiarity with the game. Stanley shot off into an early lead at the first scoring round as Andrew had no Envoys (good for scoring) and I only had two second-places behind the Ninja Master.

But it was early days, and we had time to recover. Ninjato requires you to go raiding in order to get treasure, in order to pay for either Envoy cards (good for scoring rounds) or Rumour cards (good for end-game scoring). But both are fraught with danger - in the raids, you may come up against an undefeatable sentry, and in the scoring, you may be out-Envoyed or simply find your Envoys aren't much use.

I managed to haul Stanley - who forewent his usual Rumour-based tactics - back to claim my first win of the night, and also Ninjato itself. Stan clung onto second as Andrew had a debut third place against two grizzled old-timers. As he noted, it's quite a combative game: opponents can see what clans you want to score and simply oust them from the board, making your Envoys almost worthless.

Sam 95
Stan 69
Andrew 66

The dethroned Ninja King now had to retire to bed, so Andrew and I went for another new game to him - Roll Player. This slightly oddball affair takes the best part of role-playing games - the creating of your character - and makes it the entirety of the game, as you roll dice and try to match colours and numbers to your backstory, character and alignment. Interaction isn't high but brain-burning is certainly present, as you try to give your character high enough scores to nab points, whilst also getting the colours of the dice in the right place too.

It was an exceedingly close-run thing too:

Sam 27
Andrew 26

Next up was NMBR9. I utterly love this game - I didn't think you could improve on Take It Easy but I think NMBR9 has pulled it off. We played a 2-plauer variant of going through the deck twice to use all the pieces, and I managed a substantial win:

Sam 256
Andrew 128

Before we played again, with the standard rules, and managed a draw!

Andrew/Sam 71

Next up was Biblios, and what a corker it was. Andrew made it clear he wasn't going for browns as he kept putting the value down. I didn't have any browns when he first did this, but then I kept picking them up! He also managed to feed me 2 gold on a regular basis...

I knew he was after blue dice so tried to stay quietly competitive, but it was in vain: despite picking up three of the five dice, Andrew ended the evening as Mr Biblios:

Andrew 8
Sam 7

He also ended the evening as Mr Push It, as I somehow threw away a 10-7 lead to see Andrew finish the night with two straight victories!

Andrew 11
Sam 10