Homer and Away

Forgive the epic post. I thought I'd keep tabs on the games we played in our week in Cornwall, but it turned out we played a lot of games. A lot.

Saturday

Mine and Sally's annual getaway with Katie and Mark fell just outside Penzance, specifically overlooking the train track that we became obsessed with during the week. As a present, Mark and Katie had the Trainspotting Log Book delivered on the Sunday and we began recording our debut week as 'foamers'. As we weren't sure about some of the terminology, Length was often recorded as 'Long' and Place Seen might be 'Balcony' or "next to the kettle'.

Excitement peaked early when Sally coaxed not only a wave from the driver, but a horn as well. He went in the book as 'Ledge'.

Games-wise though we began with JamSumo on the Saturday we arrived (Peppa won Sumo, Mark won Jam) followed by, post bed-time, a great game of Decrypto which Sally I won partly due to our obtuse clueing and partly down to sheer luck, when we speculated wildly on an interception and pulled it off - twice.

We followed that with Push It, which Mark and Sally won with a series of deft flicks, mostly notable for Sally's sideways karate-chop technique that started off chaotically, but improved. All of us suffered at the hands of the undulating tablecloth. But Katie definitely provided all the high spots of with her high-velocity attacks, that usually sent some element on the table careering into my midriff.

Mark and Sally 21
Katie and Sam 8

A great arrival evening, surely to be followed up by a day of rain and heavy euros.

*

Sunday

Sadly I rose (at six) on Sunday to find a gorgeous day in the offing, so the most gaming I could engineer in the morning was a game of Ganz Schon Clever against Peppa. It's a more-ish and fast-moving play with two, and Peppa gave it 7.75 out of ten, as opposed to El Dorado which she played with us recently and gave a 9.

Then we went to the beach and some stuff happened there.

After lunch, Mark, Sally, Peppa and I sat down for a game of Azul and everyone loved it (Peppa: 8.5) I made some early hay off the back of Mark (to my left) not doing anything mean to me, but as they all became more cognizant of what was happening in the game, these breezy, benign moves dried up and my possible all-blues or all-yellows or even possibly-both-down evaporated into neither. Mark's quiet contemplation proved to be the key.

Mark 75
Peppa 66
Sam 59
Sally 41

After watching Jumanji (the new version) there was another beach sortie, before Peppa and I played the debut game of Skull King. I recall Joe and Martin were familiar with it - or its mechanics - but it was new to me. A trick-taker where there are three basic suits, a trump suit, but then some pirate cards that trump everything; with an additional catch in that the strongest pirate (the Skull King himself) can be trumped by the 'weaker' mermaid.

The scoring is what makes Skull King interesting though - like contract whist you bid tricks, but you only score if you meet your bidded trick target, and if you're out you gather ten minus points for every trick you're over or under. Bidding no tricks at all gets you the round number multiplied by ten.

It was neck and neck until round ten, where Peppa's slender lead fell foul of my five-trick targeted haul!

Sam 240
Peppa 140

After tea Lula and the boys retired to bed, and it was Mark & Peppa v Sally & Katie. As with the night before, it was another one-sided battle, only this time Katie was on the winning side.

Sally and Katie 11
Mark and Peppa 3

Then the main event of the evening was The Quest for El Dorado. Mark and I had played this with Peppa recently and they were quite taken with it, so we embarked on another dash for the mythical city with nothing but forschers and was auch immer zur Holle to get us there.

It was a mixed success. Katie was rather tired and not quite in the puzzly mode to figure out the best routes. Sally didn't mind the puzzling but her northern belt-tightening ways meant she didn't like buying cards and then keeping the money. "It feels weird" she said. Weird or not, she still found a way to surge past the pioneer Mark and claim a victory in most Ian-like fashion.

Sally - makes it to El Dorado
Mark - watches Sally from a nearby lake, unable to find a paddle
Sam - trapped behind a mountain
Katie - has a nice view of Sam

We stepped out onto the balcony where the much-talked-about game of Mooning the Trains finally began, as Mark rolled back the years - and his trousers - to give the late-night commuters an unexpected view. He insisted afterwards he had only done it to impress Katie, although these motivations were revisited the next day when he realised it was his first mooning. I guess as we move through life, different things give us pause for reflection.

Mark 1
Everyone else 0

We ended the evening with a couple of games of The Mind. Or to be accurate, three games, after the first level of our first game was so disastrous we reset and started again. Both had their high spots with, at one point, a 7-8-9-10-11 going down rapid fire from all angles. But neither saw us past level 5, as shurrikins couldn't save our bacon.

Monday

Daytime Monday was a trip to St Ives. I am never going to St Ives again.

On our return I reacquainted myself with the rules of Lords of Vegas by playing through a few rounds, but I couldn't quite generate enough momentum to get four players to the table. Instead Peppa and I blasted through another ten rounds of Skull King. Peppa's initial few rounds were successful bids of zero, whilst I picked up minus points. But such is the swingy nature of Skull King that a couple of big wins put me back into contention - and as with the day before, it came down to a decider in round ten:

Sam 70
Peppa 20

In a later rematch, another round ten showdown went the other way rather more spectacularly:

Peppa 90
Sam -10

Before the children migrated to bed, and Mark and I cajoled Katie into another game of The Quest for El Dorado as Sally made tiffins. Katie was hesitant, but susceptible to coaxing, and so we set off once more, in German, for the land of gold - or to use the German, gold.

Just as before, Mark hurtled into an early lead whilst Katie and I dawdled. But just as before, he was to be overhauled in the final reckoning - despite pulling off a spectacular final move to get himself to El Dorado, Katie followed him through the gates and the cheering masses turned their attentions to her, seeing as she had the most chevron-shaped tie-breakers. Meanwhile, I was cursing my Forschers for turning up at the wrong time. It's a bit like Lignum, this game.

Katie - El Dorado!
Mark - El Dorado!
Sam - El Perazoso

With that humiliation out of the way, we moved on to the next one - Decrypto!

It was Sally and I versus Katie and Mark. Our words were DUST, EVENING, GLASS and COMPUTER. But we had a miscommunication immediately when I guessed Sally's clue of Buffy related to the evening, not dust. While Mark bamboozled us with clues comprised of words we'd never even heard of (doubotrons, opinel) Sally and I were helped that for four rounds straight we didn't have to clue 'evening' at all, as all our code cards were variations on numbers 1, 3 and 4.

They were getting closer, twice getting two out of three clues right. But when the end came, it came through another miscommunication - my clue of No relating to the Little Britain computer sketch that Sally wasn't aware of. She guessed Dust, reasoning that No would be her answer if I asked her to dust.

Mark and Katie win
Sally and Sam go to bed.

Tuesday

Skull King!

Peppa 200
Sam 140
Stanley 10

I worked in the morning whilst the others headed to the beach to christen Stan's wakeboard.

Later in the day I - appallingly - couldn't find anyone to play a game, and ended up tackling Ganz Schon Clever by myself. I didn't do great, scoring 152 points and then a very shabby 120-something. Then I realised I was selling myself short by not picking up dice from Dirk, as you're meant to with the solo game. I played again, but it didn't improve my score much.

Sam 158

Better than Dirk's zero, I suppose. I also headed into Penzance to check out the local games shop, but sadly Google was not quite as up to date as we'd like. And gaming-wise, neither was Penzance.

Skull King got played again after Joe and Lula went to bed, and this time Stan eked out a win with a low-bid strategy that, once more, was a last-round decider:

Stan 240
Sam 230
Mark 50
Peppa -30

Then after the older children also retired, I tried to convince the grown-ups to play Lords of Vegas by sheer force of will. Or at least simply repeating the words over and over. But we played Push It instead. With the tablecloth removed it was a more pleasing surface, and the game's narrative was dramatic as Katie and I surged into the lead, were overhauled, then surged back, to leave both sides poised for a win on 20 points...

Sally and Mark 22
Katie and Sam 20

I got the yips.

Then Decrypto returned to the table, this time with the teams split by gender. How Mark and I survived as long as we did I don't know, as the ladies seemed to have identified half of our words by round two. And we swung perilously close to miscommunications more than once - luckily I guessed that Mark's canopic related to Pyramid, and not to Oasis. But with Katie and Sally seemingly onto us, we had to go more and more obtuse, until my clue of Benson (for Butler) flummoxed Mark and we picked up our second miscommunication.

Katie and Sally - win!

And we finished with The Mind. After our crash-and-burns of the previous evening, this was a triumph, with Level 12 achieved with three lives and three shurrikins. I advised everyone to play the Dark Mind at the same speed they would the Light Mind, but didn't follow my own advice, and we crashed out on round three.

Mark then mooned another train.

Mark 2
Everyone else 0

Wednesday

Whilst the kids started the day watching Harry Potter and the Saucer of Something or Other, my solo ascents of Ganz Schon Clever finally reached something more respectable.

Sam 273

According to the solo game rules, that makes me equivalent with Einstein. Probably in his post office clerk phase, I guess. Post-breakfast, I had to go on a mission of mercy (dishwasher salt; lemons) whilst Stanley and Peppa played a head to head of the current game of the moment, Skull King.

Stanley 150
Peppa 100

Before Lula instigated a few games of Insider. In the first two, the insider (Joe and Sally respectively) got away with it, as we collectively accused Sally (when it was Joe) and Lula (when it was Sally). In the third game the insider was Peppa, but she was undermined somewhat by the word being 'trashbox' which we were all so unfamiliar with it sounded strange when she guessed it!

Then it was back to the beach. While Stanley and Peppa zoomed up and down in the water...

Mark and I made a face.

Then, post-lunch, after another few games of Skull King, I finally managed to get a quorate for Lords of Vegas!

Stan was still preferring to roll around on the floor like a puppy wearing a hat, so it was myself, Peppa and Mark. And things began rather badly for me when Mark took control of my first casino in short order, getting himself a two-tile gold casino on the strip. My attempt to reorganise blew up in my face like claiming a 1gold card in Biblios (although I didn't make that reference at the time) before Peppa surged into an early lead.

Like the guy in the VW advert, I put all my money on silver, whilst Mark did something similar with purple. Both of us gnashed our teeth as lots of non-silver and non-purple cards flipped over, and Peppa was first to turn the corner on the scoretrack.

Then purples began to surface, and Mark overhauled her, and as we entered endgame Peppa ran out of dice and seemed happy to simply amass tonnes and tonnes of cash.

It was looking like a two-horse race for a bit as I brought up the rear, but I was saved by fate when two Strip cards popped out in a row, benefiting all of us - but me in particular on the Game End card, as I'd just sprawled to create another four-tile casino, pushing me into the slenderest victory.

After another trip to the beach (we made a dragon)

...a dog wanted to use Stan's wakeboard...

...we came back to yet more Skull King, with Lula now another convert. Not sure how many games the kids played, or who won them all. It went on for a couple of hours!

Then there was a quick game of Doodle Rush which Stan and I shared a win on, and after Lula's bedtime Stanley, Joe, Peppa and I played Now Boarding.

This is a Tim Fowers game, he of Paperback, Fugitive, and Burgle Bros. It's got the same UPA illustrative style and like Burgle Bros, it's co-operative. Unlike Burgle Bros though, there's a time element: players are working together to carry passengers around the USA in their planes, and although you can plan as much as you like, when each round starts there's a mere 30 seconds to do all the doing, and you need to quickly factor in the new passengers who've rocked up and messed up your plans.

At the end of each round, any passengers still in the airports get an anger cube - four anger cubes and they flounce out of the game. Three flounce-outs, and the players lose. Get through all the passengers with two or less - you win!

It looks great. It plays absolutely nuts, and I found it quite stressful, even having played it a couple of times at home with the boys. 

We lost!

The grown-ups evening was relatively short, as we were all exhausted by now. but we still squeezed a couple of games in: in El Dorado my dumping cards strategy (thanks Adam) saw me claim a convincing win as the others cursed their cards.

Then on The Mind we were so out of sync that Sally realised she was listening to the radio, and I thought I was holding a card from a previous round.

And so to Bed.

Thursday

The distractions of the outside world meant the first game didn't game played until the shockingly late time of 7.30, when we played Destination X. Joe was the spy, and hid out in Uganda.

Then Peppa was the spy, and we found her in Singapore.

Joe and I went off to do stories whilst the hectic sounds of JamSumo came echoing through the floor above us. Not sure what happened, but Sally said later she'd done enough JamSumo to last her a good while. After that they introduced Sally to Skull King, but it was a baptism of fire:

Peppa 240

Stan  190

Sally 10

The evening was also games-light, with only two of them hitting the table. Azul was first. Katie's understandable reticence at learning yet more new rules was overcome by Mark and Sally insisting that she would like it, and my setting it up while they did so.

And she did like it! 

Although Sally's triple-column board aligned with all the blues meant she took a pretty convincing win. The rest of us duked it out for second.

Sally 86
Mark 74
Sam 73
Katy 67

We ended a reasonably early evening with Push It, the Gods of seating once more pitching Katie and I versus Sally and Mark. Katie's elegant 'Queen's Butler' pushing style was hitting the high spots, but my mojo wasn't on and it was another victory for Sally and Mark.

Friday

Our last day was another games-light spell as we headed to the Minack theatre for a kids show, and followed that with the beach.

In fact, bar a final outing for Skull King (I saw off Stan and Peppa) we almost didn't play games at all, until a bizarro-world style changing of identities occurred, as I speculated that I was gamed out, only to be cajoled into it by Katie. Whatever next!

With the aid of Mark's margarita and a succession of fatty snacks (and only mildly dispirited by a hiccup attack) we ended the holiday with a final blast of Azul!

Re-energised by margaritas and a reckless sense of hedonism - or as close as I get to it - I suddenly found my inner tiler, channeling Andrew's clustering to push me into the lead, and triggering enough bonuses to hold it to the drunken end:

Sam 90-something
Katie and Sally - in the 80s
Mark - in the 70s, thanks most likely to picking up no less than eight red tiles!

And with that, we were done. A gaming marathon! And a fun week.