Sumter Enchanted Evening

On Tuesday nights we at GNN like to rock up a storm with some unhealthy drinks and cheap crisps. This week there were five of us: Joe (hosting, with German beer), Sam (wine), Martin (craft beer), Chris (passion fruit juice) and me (Korean soft drinks).

We began as a foursome, with Chris still on his way, playing a new game, Carta Impera Victoria. It's a tableau building game, where you play cards to the table in front of you, trying to get seven of a type or, failing that, the majority in several types. Each suit has its own power that you can use if you have enough of those cards in your tableau. There are also powers for discarding a card, which are more powerful but, then again, leave you with one less card.

It was a bit ho hum. Maybe on the first play the more subtle aspects aren't readily apparent, because it mostly drifted past. As I write, I'm having a hard time coming up with something.

Chris arrived mid game and we eventually finished, having doubled the suggested playing time on the box, when Joe neatly used some special powers to put down two culture cards in one go, such that he had seven and had won the game.

Joe wins!
Martin, Sam and Andrew don't.

So, what next with five? As is usual, I suggest Santiago, but it never gets much support. Ponzi Scheme was poo-poohed with lightning speed by Chris and I and I must admit I felt a little brotherly kinship at meeting another gamer who disliked it as much as I do.

Instead, Martin was keen to try Sam's copy of Fort Sumter, a two player game. It's from GMT, the company that brought us Time Of Crisis, and it looked like a war game, except there wasn't much of a map and a lot of talk about "breaching".

It ended with Sam calling the result "a whitewash."

Martin 10
Sam 5

The remaining three of us considered our, options. Welcome To Centreville was cautiously put forward, as was Lords Of Vegas (surely this game is on a year long sabbatical while Katy is away) but in the end we chose Azul.

It's such a lovely game to look at, it's hard to believe there's a dark underbelly of dickishness hiding below the surface. We were all constantly keeping an eye on our neighbour's player mats. I got hit in the final round. Joe was the only one who could trigger the end game that round and he did. I scrambled to complete my dark blues but, at the end, Joe decided not to take some tiles that would fill a row but actually score him no points while he could take other pointless tiles and force me to take those tiles, giving me minus twelve points. Very harsh but, in all honesty, his only sensible move. It gave Chris the win. Joe afterwards wondered why he'd triggered the end game when he was in no position to win.

Chris 76
Andrew 72
Joe 55

Then we were all together so we played Wordsy. This is a tense game of word creation was given an air of officialdom by the presence of a Scrabble dictionary on Chris's phone.

Sam (“exculpulated”) and Joe (“xenocidal”) fell foul of this dictionary early on as his word was successfully challenged, but since every player's two lowest scores are ignored, it wasn't the set back he'd initially thought. Part of me thinks that Joe's "xenocidal" maybe should be a word.

The presence of L and Y in the selection of letters gave rise to a lot of words ending in "ally". Meanwhile, the high scoring Q and W left everyone trying to come up with a word that included those to letters.

At the end, there was a lot of predictions of fifth place, including me. However when Joe was the first to announce his score I happily declared that I wasn't.

Martin 125
Chris 118
Sam 110
Andrew 110
Joe 95

Next up, we chose Decrypto. Sam and Martin teamed up again, still looking for their first win as a couple, while Joe, Chris and I formed the other team.

Decrypto is a difficult game to explain to a newcomer, and Chris did well to get into the swing as soon as he did. I do wonder, though, if Joe's lengthy ruminations on the use of a plural in Sam & Martin's first clue was actually the key to the word in question, was maybe a clever ploy to make them over-cautious. But, on reflection, it probably wasn't.

We won by the skin of our teeth, getting two interceptions to their one. It was close because I went a bit obtuse (although I thought it was obvious) in my final round. My team couldn't get it but, more importantly, neither could our opponents so we stumbled over the line.

Chris, Joe, Andrew: know their semaphore
Martin, Sam: bad at charades

Finally, there was enough room in the evening for one last game. It was Mamma Mia, and what a peculiar band of pizza chefs we were, contrasting moments of perfectly guessing the ingredients required with long stretches of getting in each others’ way. I don’t think anyone completed a 15+ pizza.

Sam 5
Joe 4
Andrew 4
Martin 4
Chris 3

And that was that. Another fun filled evening. Thanks to all, especially host Joe and hope to see you all soon.