Sumo like it hot

This week's games night was held at a new venue, since Laura had offered to host with the proviso that space issues limited the numbers to seven. Once we established that we were indeed seven, we all ventured down the grassy alleyway to her back door: me, Ian, Martin, Matt, Joe and Sam. Laura didn't have many games of her own (although Duplo Lego caught our eye) so we relied on Sam, Joe and Martin to bring a selection.

We began as a big group around the kitchen table with Fuji Flush, and what a frustrating game it was with many occasions of promising runs of small cards being crushed by one big card just as it looked like it was about to make it around. Eventually, with four people on one card left, it was pretty tense for a while, until Matt revealed he'd been holding on to the 20 all along.

Matt 0 cards left
Ian 1
Joe 1
Laura 1
Martin 2
Sam 3
Andrew 3

Then we split into two dice based groups. Laura, Matt and Joe played Kribbeln and Martin, Ian, Sam and I chose JamSumo, a compendium of two dice-flicking games, one where you have to get your own dice off the board through a hole in the middle and another where you have to get your opponents' dice off the board, either through the hole or off the sides. It's the current hit of the Sam family, to the extent that his son called him to ask if he'd taken it with him.

The games take place on a rather handsome wooden board, raised up on legs, and I thought to myself that it's a rare board game that’s going to look better the older it gets.

First we played two rounds of Jam, the golf-esque game. In the first round, I think I managed to sink only one die and picked up 14 bad points for my troubles. (First round scores in brackets)

Sam (4) 4
Martin (0) 7
Ian (3) 12
Andrew (14) 18

Then we played three rounds of Sumo, which reminded me of Monkey Boxing in the Gamecube classic, Super Monkey Ball, except we took turns rather than the free-for-all bun-fight of the video game.

Maybe I got some sympathy after Jam, since I was rarely targeted in round one. But then I crashed out and round two ended with two points separating the top three, so round three was effectively the decider.

Andrew (17) (17) 31
Ian (9) (16) 28
Martin (12) (15) 15
Sam (0) (6) 12

It was short, sweet, unpretentious fun. I felt a bit bad for depriving Sam's son of his evening's entertainment, though.

In Kribbeln, Matt had a roll that met the criteria for that round and scored 35 points - just one off perfection. But Laura's three out of four Kribbelns put her in first. A classic case of Explainer's Curse for Joe, though.

Laura 20
Matt 14
Joe 8

Then, with all games over, we rearranged and split into new groups. And new places. With an last-minute eighth gamer expected, Andy M, the already cosy kitchen table was in danger of becoming claustrophobic. As such, Sam, Matt and Laura stepped out into the balmy evening sun to play more Jam Sumo on the garden table. Ian, Joe, Matt and I tried a new game called Pikoko, personally signed by the author, that Martin had brought. It was a trick taking game where you can't see your own cards, but you can see everyone else's. You don't play your cards and, instead, play the cards of the player to your left. Plus the aim of the game isn't to get the most tricks (or the least) but to guess how many tricks each player will win per round.

Your hand of cards is held in a plastic peacock ("Three-dimensional peacocks" declares the blurb on the box, clearly believing this to be a major selling point) which look nice but might have been surplus to requirements. Still, hats off to any game with rules in Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian.

At first it all seemed pointless and deliberately obtuse. Our first round ended with us on very level scores, which only added to the suspicion that this game was a dud.

But in rounds two and three, things changed. People began planning ahead, and getting a correct prediction on how many tricks would be won became more and more difficult as we worked out how best to frustrate the other players.

Each player has a Confidence Card that they play, face down at the start of the round, which would get you three bonus points if your prediction for a particular player was correct or minus one if you were wrong. But there is also a No Confidence Card, which just gets you one point, no matter what. In round three, I felt that I had no idea which of my predictions might be right, so I played the No Confidence Card. Imagine my delight as everyone else's Confidence Cards failed, knocking them back one point while my card guaranteed a precious point at no risk. Martin was disgusted at my cowardly play, but I call it strategic.

Andrew 20
Martin 18
Ian 17
Joe 16

As a cross between Hanabi, Divinare, and Contract Whist it worked quite well.

Out in the garden Andy M had arrived and, although I missed out on the details of each game, Sam later texted me the scores.

Jam
Andy 1
Matt 8
Sam 10
Laura 10

Sumo
Matt 25
Laura 14
Sam 10
Andy 0

After this, they embarked on a game of Ganz Schön Clever. Meanwhile, the four of us in the kitchen considered what to play while they finished.

Martin suggested The Mind but Joe wasn't keen. "You're not jaded with The Mind, are you?" asked Martin, aghast. Joe insisted that he wasn't, but just fancied something else instead. The something else was Krass Kariert. This game only has losers, not winners and after losing the first two rounds, Ian was out in quick style. His situation at the end of round two was so hopeless that there followed a not-entirely-appropriate conversation about whether Ian had been fucked three times over, or just two and a half.

Since Ganz Schön Clever hadn’t ended yet, we had one more round, where Martin was out first.

Ian lost and then Martin lost a bit.

Ganz Schön Clever was just finishing up, so we waited to all join up together in a big game of Word Slam. I, however, found that I was also finishing up and decided to bail out before it got too late. I paused at the table outside long enough to watch the scores being totted up and so see Matt waste his foxes on his lowest scoring category, which scored zero. But Andy couldn’t be reached, not by a long chalk.

Andy 180
Laura 136
Sam 133
Matt 100

Afterwards, Sam kindly let me know the highlights of Word Slam, namely Matt’s correct guessing of the word (“box”) right after Sam put up the first card (that read “object”). Higly impressive. Then again, I can’t actually think of a more object-y thing than a box. Odd that.

Sam went on to tell me they tried the hardest difficulty level, and couldn’t get a single word.

Huge thanks to Laura for hosting and to everyone for just being you.