Little messages

This week's games event was postponed by two days after an England football match, a wife's birthday and my visiting brother all combined to make Tuesday a non starter.

In the initial stages, there were six of us: the host, Sam, his kids, Stanley and Joe, Ian, Martin and me. We began with something quick and simple, Destination X. A game of deduction and geographical knowledge. Eight cards, each representing a country, are dealt out face up. Each non-spy gets three Question Cards, with a question on it (how high is the highest peak? What's the first letter of your capital city? etc) The spy, in this case Joe, secretly chooses a location and answers our questions on the subject using a handy guide book. We, his pursuers, MUST eliminate one country each round. The idea is to identify the correct country without accidentally eliminating it.

We played this lightning fast game twice. In game one we caught Joe in Thailand and in game two we tracked down Stanley in Suriname.

After this, gamer Joe was expected shortly so we bashed out a game of Doodle Rush. Each player has the same number of little wipe clean boards that they can draw on. Their target words are on the back of two randomly drawn cards. There are alternating periods of quiet, intense drawing followed by a raucous bout of guessing, with every one shouting their guesses while at the same time trying to hear what people are saying about their drawings. Get it right and you keep that board.

The scoring system is Number Of Other Players' Boards You Collected minus Number Of Your Own Boards Left In Front Of You. I didn't everyone's score but Martin won it with 7 points. I guessed most of his including a minimalist Napoleon and a very naive art version of the Mona Lisa.

Once that game was done, one Joe left us and another one arrived. How poetic. Stanley stayed with us for one more game, though. That game was Orongo, against Sam and Martin, which was something about building those statues on Easter Island, mixed with bidding sea shells for some reason. I didn't follow it too closely but I remember Sam telling his son that it would be over soon, such was the lead that Martin had.

Martin all statues built
Sam two statues left
Stanley four statues left

Ian, Joe and I played Wordsy, the game that looked enough like a book that Sam's wife picked it up, interested, before realising and putting it back down again.

The game was new to me and Ian, but there aren't a great deal of rules to remember. It basically concerns making the longest or highest scoring word from a group of eight consonants.

During the game, I pointed out Joe's habit of saying "Nice" to every word (although possibly not Ian's "ham", which Ian later blamed for his poor showing). Once I had done this, he stopped doing it which I now feel a little regretful about. Anyway, in the final reckoning, he was the nicest.

Joe 107 (best word, Swivelled)
Andrew 104 (Underwhelming)
Ian 88 (Savagely)

At this point Orongo was in the final stages so we cracked out a game of Kribbeln. In this lightning fast version (practically a speed run) Joe scored 35 with his first round attempt but didn't fulfil the criteria. How cruel.

Both Joe and I completed all four of our kribs, but a strong mid game was enough to keep me out in front.

Andrew 16
Joe 14
Ian 11

Now we were all together we went for Decrypto. Sam and I were a team, while Ian, Martin and Joe hoped that numbers would be enough to balance out our lengthy friendship.

It was, frankly, intense. Four rounds passed with no interceptions and no mistakes. Sam and I hit upon the tactic of making our three clues read like a sentence. Thus "If / a man in health / travels abroad," "Track down / Napoleon / living as a caretaker," and "I taught / the blues / to Gareth" all seemed to frustrate the other team.

We got the first interception on round five, leaving them on a knife edge. They squeezed past thanks to some clever play. Hats off especially to Joe whose clue of Cat Poo threw us off the trail. It referred to the word "message" and, indeed, Sam did mention that as a possibility while we pondered but we chose another option instead.

Then in round seven, they got a successful interception. Now it was the Decrypto equivalent of a penalty shoot out. One last round. They also had a mistake among one of their guesses, giving us the upper hand, but there was still work to do.

In the end, we made a mistake. But in a gentlemanly fashion. While Joe discussed my clues, Sam realised he'd misunderstood my clue. He went to change it, but then stopped, saying it wouldn't be right. Joe did point out that, according to the rules, getting help from your opponents is fine and, if anything, he should have been more careful. But Sam's resolve wouldn't be changed. And he was right: he was wrong. And the other team successfully intercepted our message.

This meant, after eight rounds, we were tied. The tie breaker was how many words we had worked out, but that was two a piece. There were no more tie breakers and we were forced to enjoy our shared victory.

Then we played a three round game of Voodoo Prince, with Martin giving Joe a very quick rules refresher. But it’s a game that easy to learn but a nightmare to understand. I squeaked a first round victory thanks to winning a trick with a 7 blue, giving me two tricks. But then in the next two rounds I was out first both times. Pretty high-scoring “first outs” but still a little galling. There was a brief discussion if my expression of “I’m getting wanked,” was actually part of the rules and decided perhaps not. Trick-taker king, Martin, was in first at the end of round two and then just did enough in round three to win the game. There was an impressive comeback from Sam who had a lowly two points after round one.

Martin 27
Andrew 24
Sam 21
Joe 17
Ian 16

Then we ended with The Mind. If this game shows how well you know each other,t hen we must be pretty well acquainted. In round one we successfully navigated 13, 14, 16! Rounds two and three both ended with Martin and Joe. There uncanny empathy meant they were able to play 88-89 in the right order.

We lost our first life (I think) in round four during a sequence containing 43-44-45-46. Then another went in round five. Round six ended with Martin and Joe again and they successfully played 98-99!

Now we were into the Dark Mind. Round one was clear, as we managed to navigate a 19-21 pair of cards. We then battle through round two, losing two lives, before falling during round three. Just out of curiosity, we decided to see how well we’d do at round four. It was pretty hopeless.

But nothing can take away our achievement. Round two cleared on the Dark Mind, maybe thanks to Sam’s offer of whiskey mid-game. We left with the warm feeling of having our friendships reaffirmed. By board games.