Take it to the Bridge

Notwithstanding Sam's epic journey through gaming on his holidays, it has been and remains a quiet summer here at GNN Towers. This week, like last week, we were three in number. Martin and I were returners, while the ailing Ian was replaced by Joe, back from his travels across game-friendly Germany.

I was late in arriving, and caught the second of two games of Omega, the game of surrounding your enemy that's a bit quicker than Go. In this game, cards are placed according to certain matching rules. You have to make a path behind your opponent while, of course, stopping them from doing the same to you. The game was notable for its tension, for Joe's lightning quick blitzkrieg at the end, and for the roll of kitchen towel that delineated the edge of the game.

Joe and Martin: one win each.

Next, Joe enticed us into trying Welcome To Centerville. This game of dice rolling and point collecting had its debut recently. Joe explained the rules to us and we were off.

I had no idea what a winning strategy was, so I just did what the dice told me. This lead to me being big in the world of politics despite my lack of ambition. Joe made an early grab for the media tile, only for Martin to steal it from him immediately.

Joe got hit by explainer's curse badly, as he saw his score shrink in the first round down to $8 and 4 Prestige while Martin and I were up in the twenties.

Then there was some luck for Joe as disaster struck, but he had the tile that kept him safe. Martin and I lost three buildings in the city, which meant Martin had no presence there at all. If that weren't insult enough for Martin, Joe repaid Martin's earlier deviousness by pushing him off the high scoring bridge and putting himself there instead.

This seemed to help, as the next scoring round was triggered and Joe suddenly had more money than any of us. He was still lacking in Prestige but his then current level of 18pts was a huge improvement.

As the game entered the final round, Joe turned into a new political movement, at one point controlling five of the six offices. I turned my attention to trees and buildings while Martin's tactic was thrown into disarray when Joe kicked him off the bridge again. It ended...

Andrew 67
Martin 52
Joe 47

It had a mixed reaction. Martin found it too Points Salad-y and called it "Long Yahtzee", and I was bemused for most of the game although I did find it quite tense once I realised I might actually win. Joe liked it.

I requested a game I already knew so the next up was Azul. It was a low scoring game. I entered round three with a very loaded board, and Joe and Martin were not forgiving in their tile choices. I maxed out the negative points row, with -14. Even though, I found myself at the end of the round in joint first, 20-20-17.

But by the end, the tiles eluded me. Martin got two colours and a column, Joe got a colour while I got a mere couple of rows.

Martin 66
Joe 51
Andrew 50

Next was Illusion, the fun game of area surveying. The game consists of a pack of cards. Each one has an abstract pattern consisting of red, green, blue and yellow. In each round a colour is nominated randomly and then the players have to play their card to the table, in a Timeline kind of way, in order of amount of that colour on the card. Or, you can challenge if you think that someone's made a mistake. Then the cards are turned over, revealing the percentage of each colour, and any mistake counts in the challenger's favour.

Green is the colour...

Are these really ascending amounts of green?

It's insane and you find yourself squinting at cards or trying to squash the shapes mentally to guess if one card has more red circular area than another card's multiple thin red lines.

In round two, I forgot what colour we were playing and Joe challenged me immediately, but I was right! That was the only point I got. Otherwise, it was between Joe and Martin with Joe finally winning. Still, since he could apparently discern a difference between 23% and 24% in the amount of a colour, so perhaps he deserved it.

Joe 3
Martin 2
Andrew 1

The next game we chose was Kribbeln, and so Das Exclusive was brought to the table in all its pomp. Just like Welcome To Centerville, Joe suffered a poor first round with it ending 8-8-2.

And, also just like Welcome To Centerville, his spirited mid game revival wasn't enough to get out of last.

Andrew 20
Martin 17
Joe 14

By now we'd all won two games, so what was the tie breaker? It was Face Cards, a strange game of trying to make pairs out of your six-card hand of completely dissimilar faces.

Separated at birth

Each player takes two cards from their hand that they think match. They keep one card in front of them and the other goes into a communal pile with the other players' and a few cards from the deck.

If your pair is successfully guessed by another player, then you both get a point. If your pair of faces come from different categories (ie, human face paired with animal face) you both get two points.

It was a lot of fun. I can't believe no one got my Martin Luther / Manta Ray pairing. I thought it was obvious.

Martin 17
Joe 16
Andrew 9

A very enjoyable evening. Thanks, guys.