Why Has Adam Got Big Ears?

Thursday night, and the rare and welcome sight of Adam chaining his bike in my garden. Well, the welcome bit was Adam. I don’t mind how he gets here. Already in the house was Andrew, and already set up on the table was Bunny Kingdom, my purchase from UKGE. It’s a card-drafting, area control game where there’s no quibbling over areas - or not much - and each player represents a colony of rabbits trying to expand their fiefs across the board. 

Rabbit, rabbit, yep yep

Each player starts with 12 cards; chooses two to play this turn, and passes the rest on. The cards are a mix of territories (place a bunny on the board at the specific co-ordinates) cities (place a city under one of your bunnies) and farms (add a resource to one of your fiefs) and what you’re aiming for are a collection of fiefs with a lot of cities and resources in, because at the end of each round your fiefs score points equal to towers (in cities) multiplied by resources. 

There are a couple of other wrinkles too - Camps let you expand á la Lords of Vegas in the hope the number you’re camping on doesn’t come up for the other players. You can combine fiefs together using some sort of bunny skyrail, and most importantly, gather rewards in the form of scrolls which remain hidden until the end of the game. Both Andrew and I were alarmed at the end of round one when Adam had begun stashing these already.

Bunny bunny bunny bunny

It was neat. Lots of spaces on the board have no cities or resources in, but have an allure anyway as a way to expand your fief toward more interesting landscapes. Lots of scrolls give you tactical variety, and can offset some naff bunny placement - I gathered scrolls that let me score for my bunnies along the edge of the board, and in the corners. And despite the lack of combat the drafting means you need to think about what you’re passing on as well - potentially something of an AP generator I suppose, but we played it pretty rapidly. Whilst we scrutinised our options Stanley wandered in and watched us for a while. Andrew asked him if he’d played the game and he said “No, but I’ve watched a review”. Nobody call social services, ok?

Final scoring was nail-biting as after the standard fief-scoring, we added up our not inconsiderable collection of scrolls. But after a while it wasn’t nail-biting any more, as Adam sailed past us up the score track. he even had a scroll that gave him ten points if he finished in second place! But he didn’t need it:

Adam 216

Sam 202

Andrew 182

According to the rules of the game, Adam now holds the title of Big Ears until the next time we play...

Despite rules and chat and interruptions, the hour was only half-nine, so we set up Azul. This game of tile collection needs no introduction, so after a quick refresher for Adam we were away. 

On the tiles

It was a game of surprisingly little screwage though, apart from Andrew grabbing my Chewits (red tiles, not a euphemism) in the last round and costing me ten points! I would have finished third anyway, as despite building two columns I didn't do enough in-game scoring. Adam managed to get every bathroom tile space filled, but it was it enough to catch Andrew and his very impressive multiple tile-triggering-craziness? No it was not:

Andrew 72

Adam 66

Sam 54

There was just time, it seemed, for one more game. We played Movable Type, a really sweet card-drafting, word-making game where - like Colosseum - the winner of the final round is the overall victor. In the opening four rounds, scoring big means you get first dibs on the available letters, that go into your collection. To win these rounds, you probably want to avoid a hand with three 'F's in it...

Bad management

In the final round, your collection becomes your available hand, and winner-takes-all. I think I won the most preceding rounds, but my extensive collection of letters lacked cohesion come the finale:

Adam 18 (wins on tie-breaker!)

Andrew 18

Sam 16

Andrew was making going-home noises, but when Adam suggested Avenue, he decided to stay on. "It's a late bed for me already!" he reasoned. And so we began filling our geometric valley of farms with avenues, hoping to score big. I thought we were all sounding reasonably competitive, but whenever I looked into Adam's geometric valley (again, not a euphemism) I started getting the sweats, as he seemed to be constructing some kind of tarmac-based grape-harvesting behemoth. 

Adam 95

Sam 48

Andrew 47

Another vine mess

When I saw Adam's score I scrunched up his geometric valley and threw it into the fruit bowl in a rage. Whilst Adam cackled at my drunken behaviour  evilly, Andrew and I demanded a rematch. This time things would be different, I promised him, before I discovered I was creating a confection of dead-ends that would never challenge the calculating mind of the creeping custard. Andrew found himself in a similar position - we had improved, but not enough!

Adam 84

Sam 73

Andrew 71

Great game. Adam bowed out with a plethora of victories under his belt, but by this time Sally was back and suggesting The Mind. Andrew was already going to bed later than planned, so poured himself another saki as the three of us - none entirely sober - attempted to form some kind of collective consciousness.

It's definitely not me...

We didn't quite manage it, and I was appalled when Sally and Andrew agreed we should shuriken on round one. Sally even predicted the order of play (me, Andrew, her) and got it completely back to front. We recovered, sallied, cheated slightly, then went down in a fireball on round six.

The Mind: Wins
Sally, Andrew and Sam: Lose

But the Mind wins every time, whether you beat it or not.

Midnight was fast approaching, and Andrew's late bed was now well overdue. What a cracking night! Thanks everybody, I really enjoyed that.