Mhing the merciless

Eight gamers squeezed into Joe's kitchen for some pre-Easter gaming fun. Along with Joe were Martin, Katy, Ian, Stuart, Sam, Andy and me.

We began with a nice communal game of Fuji Flush. Sam's opening hand was so bad the he ignored the usual rule of keeping them secret to show his neighbours: a veritable blue rainbow of cards below four. His luck changed slightly during the game, though, which is more than can be said for Katy.

Andrew 0 cards left
Andy, Martin, Stuart 1
Sam, Joe, Ian 2
Katy 4

At this point we embarked upon perhaps the longest discussion we've ever had about what to play next. Splitting into two groups of four was obvious, but who would be where and what was on offer?

Slowly, one game after another was brought to the table with varying degrees of reaction. Heaven and Ale was an early favourite but there were worries about the amount of space it would need. Joe then made an executive decision and got out the card table. With the chance of a card game on offer, Martin quickly moved his chair and sat beside it. He even grabbed onto it and drew it towards him, making him even more snug.

With more room on the large table, Heaven and Ale became the clear front runner and, in an effort to avoid further procrastination, Sam was encouraged to set it up and see who was interested.

Katy seemed keen but didn't want to learn a big game so soon before her year-long absence. So it was me, Sam, Ian and Andy who set off on our monastic beer quest.

The other group began their card game trilogy with The Mind. This game of consecutive guesswork played out in silence, punctuated by muffled laughter. The only talking was between rounds when they discussed the previous round.

And there were plenty of rounds to discuss. They managed to make it to the Dark Mind where the cards are played face down. Katy wanted to pee, but carried on thinking that the game was about to end at any second. But it didn't. They survived one insurmountable odd after another and cleared round three!

At this point, Katy had to go to the toilet. Did this interruption ruin their flow? Or was the task too great to continue, since once she was back, they failed round four. But only by a narrow margin.

Then they played Krass Kariert, which I paid less attention to. All I recall is the occasional comment about how mean you could be to people.

Joe and Martin won
Stuart came second
Katy lost

Finally, they played Mhing, a card game version of Mah Jong. I kept hearing calls of "Chow" and "pung" but since I was now deep into the endgame of H&A, I didn't follow it. Joe helpfully suggested to me that "Fuck the green dragon" could be used as a blog title, and as I was jotting that down, Katy began the next round with the words "that is the south wind... from my anus." Since the pen was already in my hand, I thought I'd preserve it for posterity.

Katy 128
Martin 64
Stuart 32
Joe 8

The reaction to the game seemed positive, but mostly prompted a longing to actually play Mah Jong. Joe even brought out his briefcase-sized, slightly stinky, set for all to admire.

Meanwhile, in Heaven and Ale we were in the final stages. Or, for Ian and me, the death throes. Andy had overcome his slow start where his biermiester seemed unwilling to go anywhere in a hurry, and was now bearing down hard on the monktastic Sam. I, once again, failed to put together a money making machine.

Ian had a healthy looking board and spent most of round five sauntering round and completing a cheap shed, but then he couldn't get to the scoring tokens in time in round six. This meant for the both of us the final round involved leaping absurdly ahead just to score any points at all.

Andy and Sam were playing a much more measured game. They took their time in round six with money in the bank. Andy managed to complete both sides of his board, to our amazement. He tried to insist that he didn't know if that was a good thing or not, but he did so in the tone of voice of a man sitting in front of a five course meal trying to tell people that it might not fill him up.

Sam played his usual monk-heavy game and with a very highly placed biermiester, he did enough to see off the challenge from the young upstart Andy.

Sam 49
Andy 40
Andrew 23
Ian 18

Actually when we ended, Mhing was still someway off completion, so we banged out a few quick games. For Sale was first, with some peculiar tableaux of cards whose values were all pretty equally shit. People picked them up for nothing usually with me as the main beneficiary. And then, when real high cards came out, everyone overpaid for them. Everyone except me. What I'm saying is my pile of cash pushed me from distant second into first.

Andrew 70
Andy 68
Sam 58
Ian 44

Then we played a couple of games of Fuji Flush. The first can only be described as Friendly Fuji Flush, as we seemed to follow the cards on the table rather than ruin them. It was the first game of Fuji Flush to have a sense of community, someone remarked. It was also very short, with Sam getting rid of his six cards in six rounds.

Sam 0 cards left
Andy and Andrew 2
Ian 3

Then we played a more typical spoiling game. It lasted longer and, if I'm being honest, was more fun. There's a moral in there, somewhere.

Andrew 0 cards left
Ian and Sam 1
Andy 2

Now we were all back together again and we decided on Dead Man's Chest to finish us off. This was Stuart's first game so we explained the rules to him (not that that's helped in the past). And we were off!

Andy was out first, since he merely passed on the chest, raising the bid by one. He never even looked at the dice. It could be considered an audacious tactic but the truth was he wasn't keen on the game. After that...

Joe out by accidentally looking
Stuart out to Kathy's bid of Dead Man
Martin out to Katy's blind bid of 1-1
Ian out to my challenge
Katy out wrongly challenged my 5-5
Andrew out when Sam challenged me
Sam wins!

And with that, we drew the curtain on another night of entertainment. Thanks to Joe for hosting and to everyone else for their company.