Rocket from Decrypto

This week's games night was slightly more populated than of late, with six gamers sat around the table at Joe's house.

Initially, we were five: Joe, Sam, Matt, Andy and me. While we waited for Laura, we broke out good old High Society. Joe said it was in celebration of the new edition, but I thought he said "the new addition" and was about to tell us some news about expecting a new baby. But he didn't. It really was to celebrate the new edition of High Society.

Sam started bidding big, $8m on a two. Then I went for it, picking up a "x2" card for more than its current worth in points (zero) possibly deserved. "It's an investment," I insisted.

Andy was last to pick up anything at all and Joe was sitting pretty with a ten early on, but couldn't buy another card after that.

Matt started well, but his inexperience showed when he had only one card left and was obliged to pick up bad cards until he was down to just "x2" and "1/2" cards. All that he could do was play his only money card and hope it bumped up the price until one of us fell below his final $25m. A neat strategy but it didn't work.

Andrew 14
Joe 10
Sam 10
Andy 8
Matt OUT!

Laura had arrived midgame and, with no fierce desire to split into two groups, our six-player options were discussed. Joe suggested Word Slam, the fun game of defining words with a limited vocabulary, as defined by four packs of cards containing adjectives, nouns, verbs and "others" (prepositions, etc).

We split into two teams of three and set off. One person from each team was privy to a word chosen at random and tried to find suitable words by placing cards on the four Giant Scrabble racks (two for each team) that came with the game. The first team to guess wins, but one team's guesses may give a clue to the other team.

It was a ding dong battle, with one team racing ahead, and then the other team fought back until the leading team snatched the vital point for a win.

The clues were inventive, too. Joe tried to define "mountain" as a Large Grey Place. Meanwhile, Sam was able to construct an entire sentence to describe "brake". I wish I'd written it down, but it started Vehicle Technology Procedure, or something.

Joe, Andrew, Matt win
Sam, Laura, Andy don't

And if that wasn't enough word play for you, we followed it up with Decrypto. There was a slight change in teams, and we flung into the murky world of coded messages. This murky world has quite a lot of down time, though, and while the code-giver wrestled with how to define the same word without being obvious, the rest of us chatted about things.

Joe, Sam and Laura won convincingly, and I found the greatest challenge was to not react when Joe guessed Opera far earlier than I expected him to. They intercepted two of our messages to win and even guessed three of our four words correctly.

Joe, Sam, Laura – Bletchley Park
Matt, Andy, Andrew – two tin cans connected by string

After this, we kept with the six-player motif, choosing For Sale. "It's the game six players were invented for," I exclaimed nonsensically, although I think I knew what I meant at the time.

It was new to Laura who admitted she wasn't sure what she was doing while she played. Joe behaved to type, picking up the 1 card. This was to prove pivotal since the first round of cheques was a spread of six cards, mostly in the 20,000s and the lowest being 6,000. Surely, everyone thought, Joe would play his 1 card. But then, that would mean other low cards would get better results, so perhaps he wouldn't. In the end he hedged his bets and played a 6. Everyone else played higher, so he got the 6,000 anyway. He regretted not playing the 1. Perhaps he should have. Who can say?

Andrew 52
Laura 46
Matt 43
Andy 42
Sam 39
Joe 38

After this, Laura bowed out and the rest of us sat down with Texas Showdown. We played to the soundtrack of Joe's extensive collection of female vocalists with wafty backing tracks. Andy started badly and stayed that way. Matt began well and declined while I got better as the game wore on. Was this due to me having the Zero Black every time? Maybe. But the game rewards consistency, and Joe's score each round of one, one and one set him up for a win.

Joe 3
Andrew 5
Sam 7
Matt 7
Andy 14

By now it was around eleven and, madness of madness, we finally split into two groups. Sam and Joe played Catacombs and Castles, the flicking game Sam'd been tentatively suggesting throughout the evening, and Andy, Matt and I played Raj.

I must admit that, after wins in High Society and For Sale, I felt that Raj would be perfect for me. Instead, Andy and I cancelled each other out while Matt showed us both how we to take advantage of two clueless opponents.

Matt 63
Andy 39
Andrew 24

As for Catacombs And Castles, it was still in progress when the three of us packed up to leave. It looked very confusing and Joe or Sam would say things like "I'm going to use my fireball" or "grapple shot" or whatever. One day all sports will be like this. No idea who won though.

Thanks all, and a tip of the hat to Andy who put up with two word games in one evening. He almost seemed to be enjoying Decrypto. Or was I imagining things?